[thesheriff443]

Originally Posted by Toy Santa

Identifying trends and using those trends to form a hypothesis is not the same thing as drawing conclusions - and therein lies the problem. An optimistic hypothesis is fine if it makes people feel better but drawing a conclusion from not enough data is bad science and just a bad idea generally.

Also observed correlation without control variables (as mass public data always is) does not imply causation. In other words, we have no idea if the lower death and hospitalisation figures are because “omicron is milder” or because of some other variable, such as a shift in infection demographic, effect of vaccination, old/vulnerable having previous natural immunity (or already being dead from it) etc.

People are using it to declare that Omicron is mild. We do not know that.

You can look at the lower deaths and say “phew, that’s good, hopefully something has changed that means things won’t be as bad as thought”.

You cannot look at it and say “Omg Omicron is clearly mild whup tee too Covid is just a cold now quick everyone, get back out there and snog!”

Not until there is real, robust, variable-controlled clinical data that actually shows the variant to be milder. Not until we’re well past the peak of infections and know how high that number will go.

It may be the case. I’ve never said otherwise. I’ve said there isn’t enough data to go on and there won’t be for probably another month or so. That is the simple fact. I know that people wish it wasn’t and want to believe that optimistic observations and predictions are facts. I know why. But I think it’s risky thinking - and certainly not thinking to base actual policy decisions on, as people seem to want to happen.

I think the phrase people need to keep in mind is “cautious optimism”. But maybe that’s a bit too “middle ground” for 2021, I know people are keen to throw their eggs into a basket.

A year or so ago you was working in a betting shop no you are head of the world health organisation

Intelligent people are not jumping the gun