With Omicron Dominant, COVID-19 Is Now Less Than ‘Just The Flu’Dylan Housman
Healthcare Reporter
January 06, 2022 3:55 PM ET
Thanks to the arrival of the Omicron variant, it’s now accurate to say that COVID-19 is “just the flu” for the vast majority of the population.
Before the Omicron variant, an average vaccinated 75-year-old had about a 0.5% chance of dying from COVID-19 if contracted, according to The New York Times. The typical death rate from influenza for the same age cohort, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reviewed by the NYT, falls in a similar range between 0.6% and 1.3%.
About 48 million of the roughly 54 million American residents aged 65 and older are fully vaccinated, the CDC reports. So, for those Americans, risk of dying from COVID-19 was not significantly different from dying of the flu before Omicron came around.
Now, evidence continues to pile up that Omicron is less severe — perhaps significantly so — than prior strains of the virus.
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/01/06/omicron-variant-covid-19-coronavirus-flu-influenza-mortality/
