But these are case numbers and not hospitalization numbers… which is the parent’s point, Ontario ICU numbers are stable since nov 20 even with all this omicron news and increased case count

At the start, hospitalisations tracked cases by about 2 weeks and ICU another week later. In the UK this is still the case through October, but cases were fairly flat (there were a couple of brief "waves" which peaked in cases about 2 weeks before hospitalisations). About 1 in 40 cases resulted in hospitalisation. Everyone who wanted a vaccine had had both well in advance of those figures.

In the last week daily cases have increased 50%. If this remains with the 1 in 40 case:hospitalisation ratio, then between Christmas and New Year we'll be looking at 2,000 new hospitalisations a day.

This time last year the ratio was 1 in 13 case->hospitalisations, so clearly things are far better.

However if cases are doubling every 4-5 days - with cases 4 days ago being abeing about 100k/day, in a few days time this will be 250k/day, and by christmas 700k a day. Before New Year it will naturally plataeu at 1.5m a day (because that's 1 in 6 of the population getting it in a week, and there just aren't enough uninfected people for it to go around.)

That seems to be the strategy the country is going for.

It's too late to stop it reaching 160k/day, which would be 4k hospitalisations a day - the peak of last year - based on October's admittance rates, and there's very little sign of attempts stop it going further, meaning we could be looking at 8k attempted hospitalisations come new year.

The main hope is that Omicron, combined with boosters (which already have a >80% uptake in over 60s) will reduce that 1:40 ratio

Yes, I understand ICU beds are a lagging indicator, but search "Ontario Covid Cases" and observe the exponential graph in case count without any movement in ICU count to understand that I already claim the 1:40 ratio is reduced

Further, have you seen the latest theory about the mechanism of Omicron? It grows faster in your bronchus/windpipe[0], and slower in your alveoli, so while the cytokine storm (immune response) side of the disease is still concerning, the risk of pneumonia is greatly reduced. I will not comment on cytokine storm vs pneumonia frequency in terms of long COVID or case severity as I am ignorant in this regard, but I can imagine people need the breathers less if they aren't dying of pneumonia, and I somewhat understood this to be a major issue for ICU capacity. This also explains the increased infectiousness to me, as your bronchus would emit comparatively larger viral loads with each breath than the alveoli if we still believe the droplet and not airborne theory.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/omicron-found-...

We don't know yet if the exponential growth in cases will translate to ICU cases. The Ontario government is worried enough to put in capacity limits and lockdown measures. This will be a big test of the vaccine's ability to prevent ICU cases.

I’m not sure why this is too surprising. Singapore has one of the highest vaccination rates and still tests aggressively.

80%+ of new cases were in fully vaccinated back in August.

Who would have thought that there are more vaccinated cases with 76% of the people being fully vaccinated. :)

jeez those stats are not as great a result as what I was hoping for. thanks for the link

In ontario the unvaccinated as a group have to do rapid antigen testing 2 or 3 times per week testing to keep their jobs. So much more likely to report a positive. The "doctors" on 4chan think it's ADE in the vaccinated.

ADE?

Antibody dependent enhancement. There are some infectious diseases for which the antibodies created by vaccination actually make it more likely for patients to get infected by the actual virus. There is no reliable evidence of this happening with COVID-19.

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/antibody-dependent-enhance...