DOOM: "Omicron Covid cases ‘doubling every two to three days’ in UK"

[mattster]

The real point is that in a year or so we will have endemic covid and will be treating it exactly the same way as seasonal flu, with probably much the same outcomes.

Endemic Covid is a myth, apparently, since Covid is inherently a pandemic disease just like measles, small pox and others. We'll get sporadic Covid pandemics, but we won't have low levels of Covid circulating at all times.

[jamesbrown]

The real point is that in a year or so we will have endemic covid and will be treating it exactly the same way as seasonal flu, with probably much the same outcomes.

Endemic, yes, but not necessarily the same as seasonal flue w/r to impacts and mitigation. The main difference is the transmissibility, which is much, much lower for seasonal flue than, say, omicron. In other words, you'll need to vaccinate a much larger fraction of the population to keep it getting out of control. It might be that the rates of hospitalization and deaths don't get totally out of control, as they have done, because T cells are long-lasting, but vaccine immunity wanes over time. The other concern is the rest of the world where rates are much, much higher and new variants can easily emerge. So, yes, in an ideal world, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work out quite like that.

[WTFH]

But the substantive point stands, At 600 per, that's about a quarter of Covid deaths, when covid was probably at its peak.

At the peak (a year ago today) the UK sat around 8,400 deaths per week

The real point is that in a year or so we will have endemic covid and will be treating it exactly the same way as seasonal flu, with probably much the same outcomes.

I'd expect so. The "good" thing is that when the finalised figures come out for 2021 (and the next few years), we'll see a drop in deaths from flu. This is one of the reasons why they track influenza and pneumonia, because a lot of illnesses start as flu but end up with the patient dying of pneumonia.
I believe we would see a similar pattern for covid, it may end up that reporting the three together would be a good metric.

Building up statistics over the next 5-10 years (and longer) will be interesting to see how many people survived covid but due to damage to their lungs (and other organs) that they sustained then find other health issues developing.