My current thoughts on Omicron:

It is likely less severe than Delta, but that's still not certain. Some data are saying it's a match for Delta, some saying it's 30x less lethal. I don't believe the 30x numbers for a moment, but I'd love to be wrong. I think the "same as Delta" is plausible, because we're comparing hospitalizations and deaths to case curves, and the Omicron curve is heavily back-weighted because the recent rise is so steep. My best guess is that hospitalizations are somewhat lower (1/2?) than Delta, but that overall case fatality rates will be dramatically lower, perhaps 20% of Delta's level. Huge uncertainty on that guess.

If it's the same as Delta, we will probably see much of the US hospital system collapse in January and February, when as much as 2-3x more than our worst COVID load so far hit's an already strained system. If it's 10x less severe and 30x less lethal, the hospitals will be severely strained for a couple of months, and then we enter (finally!) a semi-normal endemic phase.

The US experience is likely to be uglier than most of Europe, our vax and booster numbers are terrible. Essentially every unvaxxed person who had COVID before will get it again, mostly in December and January. Huge, huge, steep peak. The rates of record cases being set in UK and Denmark are just astounding.

I wish I knew more about when the Pfizer treatment pill will be available, and in what kind of quantities. That could be a silver bullet to save us if it's in time.

Looking past February...we're going to have essentially everybody boosted or infected by Omicron. We don't know yet how Delta reacts to Omicron infection...my guess is that Delta will escape Omicron immunity about as well as Omicron does to Delta, so we may have both strains circulating long-term as our collective immune systems get better and better at dealing with this. Most of 2022 ought to be mostly back to normal, but the first quarter is likely to be terrible.