Experts on whether getting Covid is inevitable and why, despite claims of ‘mildness’, the variant is highly dangerous.

Leaders in the US have struck a pessimistic tone about the Covid-19 pandemic in recent weeks amid rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

“That’s not true,” said Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“I don’t plan on getting infected with Omicron.

While the more transmissible Omicron variant is infecting more people than ever before, taking proven precautions can still prevent it: getting vaccinated and boosted, wearing high-quality masks, improving ventilation and avoiding crowds indoors.

Planning to get Omicron in order to gain some immunity or get it over with is a terrible idea, said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research.

If you’ve already gotten Omicron, it may have broadened your T-cell recognition and your B-cell memory and given you “a nice jolt of neutralizing antibodies”, Topol said.

In animal studies, Omicron was less effective than Delta at infecting lung tissue, making severe pneumonia less likely.

And according to a new preprint study, which has not been published or peer reviewed, illness was shorter and hospitalizations were half as likely among those with Omicron versus Delta.

But a lowered risk of getting very ill doesn’t mean no risk, Offit said.

“We do have 150,000 US hospitalizations with or for Covid, which is well beyond any record and is completely overwhelming health systems,” Topol said.

There are cases where patients are undergoing surgery or getting treated for accidents when they test positive for Covid incidentally.

It’s far more likely that Covid exacerbates another condition or causes a different illness to rise to the forefront: complications from diabetes, renal failure, strokes, heart inflammation or failure, asthma, emphysema, pulmonary embolisms.

“You can have strokes, heart attacks, kidney disease, liver disease, and then whatever long Covid is.”?

Now, more health workers are out sick with Omicron.

Now, hospitals are facing Covid plus other health emergencies, Moreno said.

“I do think that we are on the verge of getting past at least the bulk of Omicron,” Offit said

And new treatments that are very effective at keeping Covid from getting serious are on their way

It takes time to manufacture them, but within months, the US should have millions of doses – which means getting infected with Covid in a few months could be much less risky with more tools to battle it