Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: With the Ômicron, Covid kills older people again and takes babies

The omicron would be a wave of Covid of “milder” symptoms, it was said. Perhaps it is yet to be proven. But it was known that the immense proliferation of the new variant would kill many simply because it would infect many. In particular, he would kill the weakest, the oldest. Well it kills.

In four weeks of January, 38.4% of those killed by Covid in the state of São Paulo were 80 years old or older (770 deaths out of a total of 2,004). In the equivalent period of December, they were 23.3%. In November, 21%.

There were also more “insignificant” deaths, as Bolsonaristas say. As of December, no children under the age of 5 had died from the disease. In January, there were 9. Of these, 6 were babies under 1 year old.

“Oh, everyone will get it.” “There’s no way”. Hardly anyone else can stand hearing about an epidemic; many people actually live in serious psychological torment because of all the problems caused by the disease, from fear to life crippled. Whatever you think about it, the unbearable, morbid statistic or the name you give it, recommends that we take care of our grandparents, mothers, fathers. The slaughter was almost always greater among them; got worse. At this point in the new wave of doom, there’s not much left to do than the minimum courtesy towards life: don’t take with them the viruses you caught for whatever reason, perhaps most likely working, but sometimes also in futile agglomeration or also unmasked.

The daily number of deaths in Brazil has returned to 662 per day, 417 on the seven-day moving average. Such sadness had not been seen since September or October.

The blackout of disease statistics does not allow for much responsible speculation about the beginning and duration of this wave of deaths — between early December and early January, there was no reliable or complete data. Only a fortnight after that it was possible to have a less imprecise idea of ​​what is going on. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that we do not know when this outbreak will “peak” within the epidemic and at what speed the number of infections and deaths will recede.

Experts say the maximum number of cases would occur just before mid-February. The number of deaths, therefore, would begin to fall a week later, around that. Speculation is based on the behavior of the wave in countries that went through the omicron before Brazil.

But we don’t know. Apparently, from the less unreliable data, the epidemic worsened again shortly before Christmas, judging by the data on ICU patients in the state of São Paulo. It exploded once and for all in early January, after the holiday season.

The number of patients admitted to Covid ICUs seems to grow at a slower pace in recent days. It may be that we are close to the “plateau” of cases and then of deaths. But the number of people in intensive care because of the disease has reached 3,400. In the week before Christmas, there were about 900. Furthermore, we don’t know how far this plateau will be and how fast (or not) the descent from Death’s Peak will be.

What was possible to do against the omicron? Little: more of the same and faster. It didn’t. It was necessary to have vaccinated more, in a national emergency campaign. It was necessary to have explained that, “softer” or not, the omicron would be a trawler, would catch more people and, therefore, would kill more just for that. But people got tired of the subject, many were seriously tormented, local governments didn’t have a renewed sense of urgency and the bolsonarista death mandarins reinforced the campaign against the vaccine, including for children.