Omicron drives US deaths higher than in fall's delta wave

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Omicron drives US deaths higher than in fall’s delta wave

By CARLA K. JOHNSON
January 28, 2022

Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks.

The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November, reaching 2,267 on Thursday and surpassing a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant.

Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying.

“Omicron will push us over a million deaths,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “That will cause a lot of soul searching. There will be a lot of discussion about what we could have done differently, how many of the deaths were preventable.”

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-california-public-health-83c0a053bfdd615b5ae7170007c2f1f9

[Phoenix61]

1. Almost all deaths, since the vaccines were available, were preventable.

So much for omicron being “mild.”

[Claire Oh Nette]

3. milder, but five, six times as contagious

Americans are spectacularly bad at math.

[tanyev]

2. Not sure what "we" could have done differently

when there’s such a large chunk of the population hell-bent on doing absolutely nothing to protect themselves from getting Covid.