Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist who warned that the globe wasn’t ready for a pandemic, shared a new prediction last week on the fate of COVID-19: “Once omicron goes through a country, then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases, so COVID can be treated more like seasonal flu.”.

Once Omicron goes through a country then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases so Covid can be treated more like seasonal flu.

Studies indicate omicron causes milder illness than earlier COVID variants, but experts and early data again say there is little question: “Omicron is more deadly than the flu,” said John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley.

died of COVID the last week of 2021.

That’s more than three times the number of people — 1,626 — who succumbed to influenza during the deadliest week of the alarming 2017-18 flu season.

And since the coronavirus arrived in 2020, there have been just two weeks in the more than 100 weeks of the pandemic when fewer than 1,600 people died from COVID?

recorded roughly 35 million COVID cases — and more than 2.5 million hospitalizations.

There’s also the possibility, Swartzberg said, that “tragically COVID has already culled out the people who are most likely to die of influenza.”.

Still, traces of a rebound in flu deaths are starting to emerge — although they’re difficult to visualize on a scale with COVID because the number of deaths is so vastly different.

In the future, Swartzberg said, medical interventions such as vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and antiviral treatments could finally deliver us to a point where COVID could end up being a fair comparison to the flu