Cold Covid - part the twenty first

Well, Dr. Fauci has added some more confirmation that Constant Power^© makes sense.

It is an open question as to whether or not Omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for because you have such a great deal of variability with new variants emerging.

Because, naturally

But that would only be the case if we don't get another variant that eludes the immune response to the prior variant.
...
But the sheer volume of people who are getting infected overrides that rather less level of pathogenicity.

As considered in a previous missive, 2% of 400 is less than 1% of 100, and so Covid-ο is showing. Whether we see, net, more deaths per unit time is too early to tell.

But, should Constant Power^© continue to be supported by the data, we should expect that more virulent forms (aka, Covid-β or Covid-γ) would be limited in time and space, just as SARS and MERS and Covid-γ and Covid-β. One can hope.

P.1 [Covid-γ] infected people have a greater chance of transmissibility and death than B.1.1.28 infected ones.
-- the wiki

And Covid-β

People infected with Beta were 25% more likely than those infected with Alpha to develop severe disease, and around 50% more likely to require critical care, as well as 57% more likely to die.
...
As the more-transmissible Delta variant spreads, Beta is now fading in many places where it was once dominant, including South Africa and Qatar. But Abu-Raddad notes that Beta seems to be more resistant to immunity generated by vaccines and previous infections than are other variants, including Delta, and it could begin wreaking havoc again. "We should never underestimate this pathogen."

So, the evidence so far is that more virulent Covid-19 variants act closer to SARS/MERS than Covid-ο. That is a good thing, as Fauci observed.