We don’t know a great deal about this with any certainty yet.
It appears:
- To have milder symptoms in the young. We don’t know if it does in the old.
- To be more transmissable.
- Less cough, no loss of taste.
Many are suggesting this is a good variant: mild, everyone gets it, gets immune — or it turns into a new flu.
Maybe. (“Appears” is the word I used for a reason.)
What I want to know is how deadly it is for the old, how long any acquired immunity lasts, and whether it spawns long Covid.
If it does spawn long Covid, how does that work? If you don’t get Long Covid the first time, can you get it another time? If you can, and Omicron is chronic and widespread, the odds of eventually getting Long Covid go way up.
(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)
And, of course, if Covid, in general, continues to mutate fast, will a high virulence variant lead to other variants? If so, the next one might be high virulence with worse symptoms.
In the meantime, I’d suggest being careful, still. N95 masks, and let’s see how this plays out.