[volkse]

It has been discussed many times before - the issue with the SA data is that 80% of the population have been exposed to the virus (either had it or have been vaccinated) so the deaths not budging there can be very misleading for countries with lower vaccination rates.

[arn]

The other related factor is omicron is more likely (than other variants) to infect someone who has been vaccinated or previously exposed to covid. So the number of infected low risk individuals is higher, than with previous strains.

The denominator is higher than if, let’s say, delta was let loose in the same population at the same time.

[wholinator2]

To clarify, omicron is more likely to infect vaccinated or exposed individuals _than the other variants_. NOT omicron is more likely to infect vaccinated people than non-vaccinated people.

The wording startled me until I understood the intended meaning.

[toolz]

South Africa is well under average vaccination rate globally. Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the virus? Of course they've been exposed to the virus, that's exactly why it's interesting to see how their deaths follow cases.

There's no indication that the first world, with much higher vaccination rates won't fare better than South Africa, which seems to be faring exceptionally well relative to other case spikes.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the virus?

"have been exposed to the virus" usually means something like "immune system isn't totally unprepared, but has had contact with this virus before (or a proxy via vaccination)".

In South Africa, it is mostly via getting COVID-19 in the Alpha or Delta waves.

Yes, over 70% of South Africans have had it:

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bloomberg/news/2021-12-14-ove...

[crummy]

From memory, SA has 3.3mil confirmed cases, and an estimated 7.8x total when you include unconfirmed. So roughly 75 percent of the population have caught covid. Plus vaccinations, that adds up to a lot of mild reinfections.

[AuryGlenz]

He means they were already exposed to another variant so they have some immunity.

That immunity may very well work better than the vaccines on omicron - I don’t think we’re far enough in to it to have a great idea of that yet.

[kelnos]

I think parent meant that they have a high (prior) infection rate, not exposure rate.

[cpncrunch]

Similar situation in Denmark as well. Huge number of omicron infections, but deaths haven't budged and number of covid patients in hospitals are actually decreasing.

[tome]

This comment links to Reuters, which says "Denmark reports its largest number of coronavirus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic: 57". Where are you getting your data?

https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654645

[richarme]

Your comment is factually untrue. 17 people died yesterday. Didn't have this high number of deaths since last winter before vaccines, and from the chart deaths seems to have increased 10-fold compared to a month or two ago. I'd like to see a source for your claim that numbers in hospitals are decreasing.

[tanseydavid]

Can anyone point to an official worldwide number of deaths attributable to Omicron?

[stillicidious]

Such a number would be difficult to interpret, or entirely meaningless, without understanding the classification methods and policies of each constituent region. This also holds true of overall death statistics.

Finally with local statistics, you still have political dramatics like https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1473480933579923456

[exdsq]

Take this with a heap of salt but I looked for this figure yesterday and found it to be 12 in several sources, but hard to find the official figures. Share them if you do find them!

[JPKab]

Isn't the same percentage in the US exposed, either via vaccine or previous infection?

[hammock]

Wait, natural immunity is real?

[lkbm]

Yes, there's definitely some degree natural immunity. There's mixed evidence as to whether it's stronger[0] or weaker[1] than full vaccination, but it's definitely better than nothing.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34735425/

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.12.21263461v...

[zerocount]

Sure is. There's millions of us walking around without getting shots every six months.

[andybak]

Please don't post comments like this. It's impossible to work out what your actual point is