require hospitalization. so your point about might it be more important as we now merge into possibly a less severe virus, which it looks like it is right now, that the critical parameter is how sick people get, do they have to go to the hospital, what is the deaths, as opposed to what is the absolute number of positive tests and infected people that you have. very often you can t just forget about the number of people who are infected, because that s the forewarner of what might happen with hospitalization. but as you get further on and see less severity, clearly hospitalization is the important thing. and i want to ask specifically about hospitalization. one of the recent concerns, i m sure you re getting asked a lot about this, how do you explain the sudden increase in hospitalizations among children? i mean, if omicron is less severe in 15 to 20% less likely
is my black santa with the booster shot. he is gearing the booster shot for everybody. tell me about this. people are really confused. everyone i know is really scared of omicron, or as i m supposed to call omarian. they re scared of it. it does seem like it s spreading so fast. i ve known multiple people who have unfortunately contracted covid just in the past couple weeks. omicron deadlier or just more spreadable? or should we cancel our plans? right. so thank you so much for having me. you know, i will say that the data that we have so far is preliminary. but what we see from the uk, south africa and denmark is omicron may be a bit milder than delta. so we re seeing a decreased risk of hospitalization among people who do get omicron. but to put that in context, both south africa and these european countries have a higher degree of partial immunity. south africa, 70% of people have