The COVID-19 pandemic

[plam]

Data from South Africa appears to indicate lower severity for Omicron. Data from the UK, however, appears to indicate similar severity. Both conclusions are still preliminary, and it's not clear to me that the differences are controlled for other factors, such as the vaccination level of patients checked. I do expect we'll learn more in the coming weeks.

The older UK data said there was no evidence that omicron was milder (which doesn't mean that it is or it isn't). Today's data from the UK does seem to support milder, but the increased transmissibility is still going to cause problems, because it's not milder enough.

But for all of that, we really don't know yet.

Yeah, still work in progress.