Add onto the fact that at this point, everyone has already been infected with (a much weaker version of) COVID and consequently the natural immunity drops the already near-zero IFR even lower.
Omicron's illness severity is much lower than Alpha and Delta. Omicron is also more transmissible than both of those variants. It's actually the same mutation that causes both of these effects. The mutation that created Omicron made it better able to infect tissue in the upper respiratory system, like the nose and throat. As it became more attuned to those tissues, it became less able to infect lung tissue.
So, because it mainly stayed in the upper respiratory tract, it spread very easily, but it didn't kill as often, because upper respiratory infections only really become fatal if they spread to the lungs and do serious damage there.
It is convergent evolution towards the common cold.
The cold is also a corona virus, and it has a strategy of being highly transmissible and mutating quickly, so as to be able to dodge the immune response and re-infect individuals.
The common cold also stimulates mucus production and sneezing, so as to further spread itself. The patients sneeze infected mucus everywhere for a day or a week, then they are fine.
INSANE that they don't break that up further, because as soon as you remove the 40 - 60 age range it becomes so tiny it isn't even worth mentioning.
And that includes the rampant over-reporting of Covid as cause of death worldwide...so the reality is even lower.
Add onto the fact that at this point, everyone has already been infected with (a much weaker version of) COVID and consequently the natural immunity drops the already near-zero IFR even lower.
Is Omicron weaker than the Alpha variant, or just weaker than Delta?
Omicron's illness severity is much lower than Alpha and Delta. Omicron is also more transmissible than both of those variants. It's actually the same mutation that causes both of these effects. The mutation that created Omicron made it better able to infect tissue in the upper respiratory system, like the nose and throat. As it became more attuned to those tissues, it became less able to infect lung tissue.
So, because it mainly stayed in the upper respiratory tract, it spread very easily, but it didn't kill as often, because upper respiratory infections only really become fatal if they spread to the lungs and do serious damage there.
It is convergent evolution towards the common cold.
The cold is also a corona virus, and it has a strategy of being highly transmissible and mutating quickly, so as to be able to dodge the immune response and re-infect individuals.
The common cold also stimulates mucus production and sneezing, so as to further spread itself. The patients sneeze infected mucus everywhere for a day or a week, then they are fine.
It is a highly successful strategy.