they re talking about the omicron variant. i want to bring in dr. megan ranney. she is associate dean of epic health at brown university. hi, dr. ranney. do you agree that omicron appears less severe due to the baseline population. dr. gottlieb said it was 80% baseline immunity. what do you think? it s too early to draw firm conclusions about the severity of omicron. what most of us suspect is that the milder disease that folks are reporting does reflect the fact that in south africa and the u.k. and now in the u.s., we have a large population that are vaccinated. it s saying they are going to be about a week or two weeks out from having firm numbers about how bad omicron really is for the unvaccinated versus for