“There is at present ‘no evidence’ that the Omicron coronavirus variant is any less severe than the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London, which also highlighted the elevated risk of reinfection posed by Omicron and the need for booster shots to combat it,” the Financial Times reports.
Tomas Pueyo: “There are two types of fatality rates that are relevant: the fatality rates for (1) those vaccinated or with a previous infection and (2) those naive (not immune). My fear is that most people have fallen for Simpson’s Paradox. Simpson’s paradox says that, if you mix two populations, it might look like a pattern is going in one direction across both populations. But if you look at each population separately, the pattern reverts.”
“Put in another way: the effect is one of mix of populations rather than a true trend. For Omicron, we could be mixing the fatality rates of immune and naive populations, and because there’s so many more immune people now, we think Omicron is less lethal, when it fact it’s more.”
Save to Favorites