Analysis: "Mild" Omicron could still be bad and cause a lot of illness and disruption.,

Mild Omicron could still be bad POLITICO

NOT SO TENDER AND MILD — The early indications suggest that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus typically causes disease that is “mild.” But even if that turns out to be true, “mild” doesn’t mean “no big deal.”

Mild Covid-19 can still cause a whole lot of illness, a whole lot of economic disruption, a whole lot of strain on health care systems around the world. In the U.S., the big Omicron wave could hit in January when we could also be wrestling with a travel-propelled post-Christmas Delta surge. Plus maybe the flu.

“I’m very worried,” said Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer at the American Society of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Obviously, a case of mild Covid is preferable to coming down with the Vaccine-Evading Killer Bug From Hell that we worried about when we first learned of mutation-riddled Omicrom over Thanksgiving. But because Omicron is so contagious, there could be many, many cases — an exponential outbreak.

“This is going to take off. The numbers of people who get sick will be substantial,” Plescia said. And even if only a very small proportion of them end up with severe disease, that still adds up to a lot of very sick people.

For instance, if the fatality rate for Omicron turned out to be only one-fourth of that for “original” Covid, but Omicron infected four times as many people, then the same number of lives would be lost.

“It’s the math,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU.

And “mild” to an epidemiologist doesn’t mean the same thing that “mild” indicates to you and me. Mild to us means not feeling so bad. Mild to the public health professional just means you aren’t in the hospital. ...