Well, if anything the past two months has taught us, is that vaccination rate in countries has zero impact on the number of cases of the next wave.

That certainly was not true pre-omicron. Here I’m the UK even with Delta, widespread early vaccination made a huge difference. Life here largely returned to normal for much of the past year with very low hospitalisation rates. It saved huge numbers of lives, with a relatively open society.

Now with omicron it’s spreading so fast that even though it seems to be less likely to put you in hospital, it’s infecting so many people the numbers in hospital are shooting up anyway. Vaccination is still saving huge numbers of lives here, but we are phasing in some limited lockdown rules as they become necessary.

On a personal note I caught the virus 2 weeks ago. I was pretty sick for a few days, but shook it off after a week thanks to being fully vaccinated. The rest of my family had it too and my reaction was the worst. I hate to think what it would have been like if I hadn’t had the vaccine working for me as well. I’d probably be dead.

Do you have a source for numbers in hospital shooting up? I normally check here: https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

That’s a lot lower than I realised. I was relying on what is probably only a local change. Looks like the vaccines are doing an even better job overall than I was aware. Thanks.

I definitely think there will be more pressure on the system due to staff absences that isn’t represented in any of those graphs. It would be good to have some visibility of that - actual hospital capacity vs used capacity or something like that.

there's also the possibility that omikron is in itself much milder

You're making a lot of assumptions, there.

It would likely have been worse if you weren't vaccinated, but not necessarily. It would almost certainly not killed you.

You just need to remember to add 'probably' or 'possibly' in front of most of your statements. People will accept them more, and your mind will be clearer and more rational.

I did say probably. There were two nights when I was gasping for air and hardly slept, it was very distressing. I’m not trying to exaggerate anything, that’s just how I feel about it.

I highly doubt you have data showing that. If you do, I'd be very interested in seeing it.

At the very least though, the vaccination rate has a large effect on hospitalizations and deaths.

That's not what we've learned.