the full text of the link:
The omicron coronavirus variant is causing a milder disease than the delta strain in most Britons, government scientists are expected to say today.
The UK Health Security Agency is set to publish real-world data on the severity of the disease, which is expected to say that more people are likely to have a mild illness with less serious symptoms.
The political site Politico reported the findings this morning. It says that while omicron seems milder overall, the UKHSA has found it is not necessarily mild enough to avoid large numbers of hospitalisations. The experts have found evidence that for those who do become severely ill, there is still a high chance of hospitalisation and death.
Given that the transmissibility of omicron is very high, there is the chance that even though it is milder, infections could soar to the point that large numbers end up in hospital .
On Wednesday, the health minister Gillian Keegan said there were 129 people in hospital with omicron and there had been 14 deaths. Asked on Sky News whether a circuit breaker lockdown could happen after Christmas, she said: "We are waiting for data on the severity, we'll still have to wait to see where we land on that, but we can't really say, you know.
"What we've said is up to Christmas we're fine looking at the data, looking at the numbers we have at the moment, but, of course, we have to look at where this virus goes, where this variant goes, so we have to look at that data."
although it mentions the concern of infections soaring, it's clear they are not soaring from the case numbers, that hospitalisations are not soaring, and deaths are not rising at all yet (they continue to fall daily numbers and 7 day average continues to fall). if anyone is concerned that this is actually a reflection of limited testing, testing per 1000 people has massively ramped up since november and is nearly at record levels, and positivity remains pretty stable in the 4-5% where it has been for months now. remember we were told infections would double every 2-3 days, well this is the oddest looking exponential growth curve i have ever seen.
as usual though the doomsayers will be along soon and say none of this evidence or data counts for some reason.
adding this to the months worth of data from south africa, i am really not sure how much more evidence or data one needs to see omicron is milder. someone less generous than me might suggest that had all the months worth of evidence from south africa shown worse outcomes than delta they wouldn't have the same reservations somehow and be invoking apocalypse without hesitation.
a good scientist doesn't ignore data even if it goes against there own prejudice.