The New York Times – Spare a moment to think about older people. “Some of the country’s new Covid acceptance — or fatalism — stems from frustration with the costs of pandemic precautions: the loss of learning from closed schools; the isolation from social distancing; the nationwide rise in blood pressure, drug overdoses, mental health problems and more. And some of the new attitude stems from the reality that contracting Covid will not be a big deal for most people. Hospitalization rates for children and for vaccinated people under 50 years old remain minuscule. But I do want to raise one major point of caution. Covid in recent months has continued to present a meaningful amount of risk to older people, despite vaccination. It’s too soon to know whether Omicron will change the situation, but the safest assumption — absent more data — is that Covid will remain dangerous for the elderly.

There is good reason for older adults to continue to try to avoid becoming infected, because the risk for hospitalization in that age group is still significant,” Dr. Shelli Farhadian of Yale University told me. The risks here for older people are frightening: A rate of 0.45 percent, for instance, translates into roughly a 1 in 220 chance of death for a vaccinated 75-year-old woman who contracts Covid. If the risks remain near these levels with Omicron, they could lead to tens of thousands of U.S. deaths, and many more hospitalizations.”… [Note – more than 800,000 Americans are dead as a result of Covid to date.]