We are misusing our perspective. Looking at the individual behavior of a variant hides the impact on the wider public.
The Misuse of Perspective
Being in a pandemic, we are having to watch scientific study happen in real time. Which is something few of us have experience doing. But it is a skill we’ll certainly be using much more.
As each new variant has come into our consciousness, we want to know what it is like. And we do this by measuring in several ways. Most importantly,
- how quickly does it spread
- how easily does it spread (by evading our defenses)
- and how harmful are its effects?
What this looks like in real-time is that we are having to juggle these variables in service of a single question: how worried should I be?
But just like getting assigned reading in school, many of us just want to know what’s on the test. Give me the executive summary.
How lethal is it?
The problem for us is that this question has two answers.
I’m not an immunologist and chances are neither are you. But we’re running around with two different measurements of lethality.
The first is the particularity of the strain’s behavior. When one person gets COVID-19 from this strain, how likely is it that they will die from it. From the beginning, this has been one of the ways we’ve measured the danger this virus poses to us individually.
The second measurement is how lethal the strain has been overall. How many people have died from it?
Omicron has been touted as a more rapid spreader, but less lethal variant than Delta. Which is accurate and true. But only as it pertains to the individual. To the population, Omicron is already headed for the crown as most deadly variant.
This variant is the fastest, most effective, and trickiest one yet. Meanwhile, it also is likely to be more lethal than the original. Given its capacity to spread and kill, it need not be as effective as Delta to be more deadly than Delta. If it keeps infecting, and infecting as severely as it does, it will be the king variant in no time.
This comes from a misuse of perspective.
As scientists are tracking the virus, they want to know what its individual behavior as a virus does and what its effect on the individual does.
But they don’t stop there.
We need to know what this means to populations. It is never just about me in a global pandemic.
We are all trying to engage with the risk, which does require our knowing how the virus behaves toward us as individuals and what is happening to our community, region, and planet. Because we all know that prevention requires a public commitment.
When we zero in on the individual behaviors, we miss the actual picture. In other words, we can’t do the math.
Think of it this way. If Omicron spreads twice as effectively as Delta, it can be nearly half as lethal as Delta and still kill more people. And early indicators show Omicron as being ridiculously effective at spreading.
This isn’t a tame strain: it’s a Trojan Horse.
As so many of us keep thinking of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its individual variants as an individual problem, we will continue to have a public health emergency.
I recognize the desire to see a silver lining. And it is accurate to say it has a less lethal capacity than Delta, but it is functionally inaccurate to call it tame or less lethal given the way it spreads.
And in the end, if it doesn’t claim as many lives as Delta globally, it is likely more to do with the prevalence of interventions and the global response to a global problem. Which further drives the real point home.