There's a jargon problem here, I think. Some people like to compare the number of cases to the whole population. For example Canada has had 30,862 deaths attributed to covid as of Jan 11 2022, so these people would calculate the percentage of deaths by dividing 30,862 by the population of Canada (38,246,472) and multiplying by 100. This gives 0.081%. The CDC calls this the cause-specific mortality rate - although they would present it as 80.7 per 100,000.
I have never understood why anyone would want to calculate the effect of covid by looking at people who don't have the virus. It makes more sense to me to ask "how many die out of the people who get sick?". In Canada today that's (30,862/2,595,960)x100 = 1.2%. The CDC calls this the case fatality ratio.
Omicron has invalidated both of these rates because our case counts are no longer valid.
So now with Omicron the best indicator of our success in dealing with these days is the vaccination status of the people entering hospitals. In terms of occupancy per 1 million as of today there are 762.7 unvaccinated people in hospitals compared to 171.7 vaccinated people, and 191 unvaccinated people in ICUs compared to 18.8 vaccinated people.
Putting it another way: vaccinated people are 77.5% less likely than unvaccinated people to wind up in the hospital and 90.1% less likely to wind up in the ICU.
Proportionally way more unvaccinated people wind up in hospitals and ICUs. https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashboard/
There's a jargon problem here, I think. Some people like to compare the number of cases to the whole population. For example Canada has had 30,862 deaths attributed to covid as of Jan 11 2022, so these people would calculate the percentage of deaths by dividing 30,862 by the population of Canada (38,246,472) and multiplying by 100. This gives 0.081%. The CDC calls this the cause-specific mortality rate - although they would present it as 80.7 per 100,000.
I have never understood why anyone would want to calculate the effect of covid by looking at people who don't have the virus. It makes more sense to me to ask "how many die out of the people who get sick?". In Canada today that's (30,862/2,595,960)x100 = 1.2%. The CDC calls this the case fatality ratio.
Omicron has invalidated both of these rates because our case counts are no longer valid.
With Omicron the best indicator of our success in dealing with these days is the vaccination status of the people entering hospitals. In terms of occupancy per 1 million as of today there are 762.7 unvaccinated people in hospitals compared to 171.7 vaccinated people, and 191 unvaccinated people in ICUs compared to 18.8 vaccinated people.
Putting it another way: vaccinated people are 77.5% less likely than unvaccinated people to wind up in the hospital and 90.1% less likely to wind up in the ICU.
Proportionally way more unvaccinated people wind up in hospitals and ICUs. https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashboard/