For the week ending January 15th, the national point estimate of Omicron is 99.5%. The 95% Prediction Interval is 99.3-99.7%.
Every HHS region has a point estimate of 98+% now. The lowest regional 95% Prediction Interval lower bound is 95%.
Everywhere is virtually all Omicron at this point. Hopefully Delta will be fully pushed out. Just dealing with Omicron would simplify the situation.
So I want to separate observed severity from intrinsic severity. Its observed severity is much much lower than previous waves because we have so many previously infected and vaccinated people and a higher reinfection risk than previous variants, so more people with immunity getting infected.
Its intrinsic severity is also lower but less so. It is only about ~10-20% less intrinsically severe than Delta was, which was more severe than the OG wild type coronavirus. So if you are unvaccinated and have no prior infection immunity it is still bad news and dangerous.
Does that make sense? So don't deliberately try to get infected with Omicron.
Could it end the pandemic?
A lot of people are going to get infected with it. If you are vaccinated you'll have a much lower risk of severe disease. Especially if boosted. If boosted you'll have some protection against infection, but don't be surprised if you get infected as well.
We are seeing fewer ICU admissions than the Delta wave relative to overall case numbers. But again that's mostly due to high population immunity.
It is dangerous for society right now overall as it is so contagious a lot of infections are happening fast and in a lot of people that were previously protected.
At the end of the Omicron wave a lot of people will have prior infection immunity and vaccine immunity. So generally we'll have very high population immunity. Omicron infection reduces your risk of reinfection with Omicron and Delta.
It will likely subside in the coming months and so the epidemic phase should be over, but we will likely have it still spreading in society over the long term. And of course mutations are still a long term risk. There is no hard rule in virology that a virus evolves to become less virulent with time. We could always get a new variant that is more severe/evades prior immunity. So ongoing genomic surveillance will be important.
But we should have oral antiviral supply in the coming months and with such high population immunity from vaccines and infection, most of the hospital burden should be low once we get through this wave. During the Winter months we may have surges. I'm not sure we really know what the year to year outlook will be. A lot up in the air in terms of how severe endemic coronavirus will be.