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I'm not sure that any of the posts today contradict my original post this morning. The SA press seems to still be anecdotally reporting relatively mild symptoms. The data linked to from the SA health body shows a rise in admissions but no corresponding significant rise in deaths yet. It's difficult to properly analyse (I can't download the data sets from the tableau deck) but hospital admissions in Gauteng don't seem to fit the overall picture for the wider area over the admittedly short time period in the graphs. Gauteng seems to have had fewer admissions earlier on the period.
My point this morning was really one of frustration that COVID has essentially turned into a Baudrillardian media farce with such luminaries as Prof Reicher appearing on both the WaO on R4 and the C4 news today, stating that the restrictions should be reframed as protections on WaO. Reicher (and Sridhar) seem to be part of a set of rotating media donkeys that are currently scooping up the appearance fees whilst giving opinions on matters way beyond their professional competence. The rise of the social sciences in my opinion is directly correlated with the importance given to lockdowns, mask wearing and other mitigations which are essentially behavioural tools that were gladly grabbed by governments pre vaccination to be seen to be in control. There is still no statistically significant evidence that face coverings impact the transmission of COVID. Lockdowns merely delay the inevitable, and hand washing is ineffective.
I find it surprising that people swallow the endless COVID news cycle and place their trust in our elected and unelected state servants. Senior figures have repeatedly breached their own rules showing just how much faith they have in the science.
Science is a place for dissent and argument not endlessly parroting the party line.
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hurricane_run
Eseman
You ascertain incorrectly. Its true to say that there are fewer hospitilisations in SA at this stage of wave 4 compared to the same stage in wave 3 but you're ignoring the fact that hospitilisations and ICU beds are starting to increase there, that mostly younger people are infected in SA so far, and there are signs that more older people are starting to be infected. There's also the still unanswered question about why more children are ending up in hospital with Omicron than they did with Delta.
There are some reasons to be optimistic for sure, but its way too early to say Omicron is mild and that it doesn't kill people. The key point is that if we wait to find out, it'll be too late.
It has also only been about 2 weeks since Omicron was first detected.