All you need to know that in South Africa it outcompete Delta and that out of 50 mutation 32 on spike protein and 10 on receptor binding domain (IIRC delta and SA variant only had 8 and 3) but regardless the immune escape is even more likely with omicron.

Is it deadlier than what we had seen so far is yet to be seen; most likely not viruses usually evolve to being less deadly and more contagious but we will know it soon. Some estimates show that it is 500% more contagious than delta, so if R jumps to R5-8 the health system will be under alot of strain hopefully not a repeat of NYC and northern italy or worse.

Oh, I like to know a lot more than that. I may not need to know, but it's in both my nature and my background to want to know. I sit around here in the evenings discussing this stuff with my medical wife, daughter and son. Come around to my house for an evening of riveting conversation and sparkling wit

They have to deal with this stuff at the sharp end and so far their only source of info about the Omicron variant has been the Daily Mail (and the rest of the hysteria rags). It's only this morning I've seen the first actual information in a journal I'd trust. No doubt there's loads more on the way but it takes time to do the work, write it up and publish it. To misquote Mark Twain, "a headline is halfway round the world before truth has put its boots on". There's money to be made from scaring people.


An interesting ... well, what are we dealing with here? Is it observation, analysis, hypothesis, insider knowledge? Usually though when someone purports to 'know' what's actually going on I tend to react with a degree of suspicion. History has proved again and again that we're all - governments, businesses, markets, all our august institutions - just blown around by the winds of change. Almost nobody has the faintest idea, and if they seem to in the short term, a longer baseline usually shows it was either chance or simply in the right place at the the right time. As is often said of politicians it's better to be lucky than talented. If enough of them spout enough nonsense the chances are someone will get close to what actually happens.

https://youtu.be/Ls7zy6_0Z2s

Virulence and infectiousness are not necessarily linked. There is no evolutionary pressure for Covid to become less deadly. Unlike some viruses (such as MERS - to which it is related - and Ebola), it doesn't kill 70-90% of those it infects. Such high kill rates do favour less deadly variants, because the host population isn't wiped out.

Covid is on average 1% fatal so there is no pressure on it to become less deadly. Its strongest weapon is its infectiousness, and the spike protein mutations have strengthened that weapon. The worry is they may help it escape the vaccines as well. Given that the spike proteins are the means it used to enter human cells and replicate, it seems likely to this layman that an increased viral load will result in more cellular damage. At this stage we don't really know, because the infections from Omicron are in the hundreds compared to the millions we have seen with Delta.