unvaccinated people? omicron versus delta, omicron versus the earlier variance. is omicron less severe both in vaccinated and unvaccinated people or are unvaccinated people essentially opened this in a way that there is really no mercy for them from the virus? yes, two things are going. on first of all, there s more breakthrough infections and there was with delta. so that means we have a bigger pull of vaccinated people getting invested. but there is no question about it that their levels of illness is very low. after that breakthrough, compared to what we saw with delta for unvaccinated people the jury is not fully in. i think that the data suggests that the may be milder for them. but mild air is relative. right? delta was really bad. omicron is still pretty bad. making marginally better. that is good, but you cannot take any solace and that. especially older unvaccinated people they risk
you re infected with omicron versus delta and what s most prevalent in your community. now, what we re seeing in washington, d.c., where i think until today we ve been sort of the global can i stop you right there, doctor? yeah. so what is the difference? what s the difference between omicron and delta? i m getting there, i promise. okay. so looking places like new york and washington, d.c. where the majority of the patients that we re seeing right now are omicron clinically. now, when we look at say the statewide statistics of all 50 states, there are clearly states that have not had that upward tick that is coming. and we can safely say that they re not seeing an omicron surge yet. now, in the cities where omicron is the preeminent, the primary variant that we re seeing, we are overloaded. but it s mostly with patients with mild illness who are crowding the emergency departments. those patients, like has been adopted by ems in new york city, need to be told they need to
get a high quality test to make sure you re not infectious. there s simple not enough tests to do that which is why you saw this without testing, to end isolation early. yeah. you re very clear. that all makes sense. let s read off a little here of what we re hearing about omicron versus delta. the infection appears to protect, they say, if you do get it, against the delta covid variant and one study says it could displace it. the results saying, omicron displaces the delta variant snls it makes reinfection with delta less likely, according to the findings from this scientific study that was done in one of the countries that had this early on. your thoughts? i think it is really promising. it is before peer review so i say it with a caveat. great that we re accessing science in more real-time than we ever used to. i do want it to be peer reviewed and we ll see if the results they claim they have stand up to review. if all that is true which i hope
hospitalization for our children compared to the delta surge. when we look at the kids less than 5 years old, it was a five times increase in hospitalization rate for those children with omicron versus delta. and we ve, unfortunately, lost over a thousand children to covid-19. so the question, again is, what are we offering up for protection when those kids cannot be vaccinated at this point. we re threatening to take away masks, and we have done nothing to slow the spread of covid-19. this is not the time to let down our guard. so what do you recommend, doctor? i recommend that we do not sway from strategy that has helped to keep millions of americans alive today. unfortunately, we have lost 910,000 americans. we don t have to continue with that path. until we have every american vaccinated. until we at least try to make it available to every american. until we again try to push for persons to get boosts, at this point, we only have 24% of our population boosted.
that link is very, very tight. what is happening now is we re seeing a lot of infections in boosted people, in vaccinated people, that are not leading to hospitalizations, that are not leading to deaths, because vaccines work. the reason you re still seeing a hospitalization increase in a lot of those places is because 40% of americans are still not fully vaccinated. 80% of americans are not yet boosted. and not just overall, but we have like 7 million elderly americans who are not vaccinated at all. it s striking to me how many vulnerable people are still out there. those are the folks who when they get infected, are going to the hospital or they end up in the hospital and end up in icu. in terms of the data about severity, about people likely to end up in the hospital, likely to end up in the icu, is the data parallel in vaccinated people and unvaccinated people? omicron versus delta, omicron versus the earlier variants, is omicron less severe both in