Quote:Planning to get Omicron in order to gain some immunity or get it over with is a terrible idea, said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. “This is a real-deal virus where there’s unpredictability,” he said. “
Some people can get very sick. Some people can get long Covid. Some people unwittingly will then get immunocompromised people sick”, leading to hospitalization and death. He added: “There’s too many liabilities, too many uncertainties and unpredictabilities when you get a virus with this known profile that can be very severe and lethal still.” And it’s not at all clear if recovering from Omicron would protect against future variants. If you’ve already gotten Omicron, it may have broadened your T-cell recognition and your B-cell memory and given you “a nice jolt of neutralizing antibodies”, Topol said. But “you can’t possibly make that assertion that Omicron will protect from the future”.
But isn’t Omicron mild? Definitely not a guarantee. It is still a deadly illness. Omicon is less severe than Delta – but Delta was itself more severe than previous variants. “It can still be severe,” Topol said. He calls it less severe, not milder. “‘Milder’ caught on early, and I think it’s unfortunate it’s given this impression, because there’s so many people dying and winding up in the ICU.” The US has record-high hospitalizations, and cases are more than three times higher than our previous highest peak, a year ago. That’s because the other characteristics of Omicron – its immune-evasiveness and transmissibility – more than outweigh its relatively less severe symptoms. When more people get sick, there are more chances of the illness going very wrong.
‘I have no intention of getting infected’: understanding Omicron’s severity | Omicron variant | The Guardian