The highest plausible infection fatality rate (IFR) for Omicron variant comes from the limits of a 99% Bayesian credible interval on death data in Ontario. The study found 12 total deaths out of a sum total of 37,296 Omicron infections.
The most-deadly that Omicron can be — the highest IFR consistent with the observed Omicron death data — is to have an IFR of 0.064%, equivalent to 1 death per 1562 Omicron infections.
But, compared to a bad season of flu, Omicron isn’t even half as bad as flu. Here is a bad season of flu (2014/15) with a best-case scenario IFR of 0.141%, equivalent to 1 death per 707 flu infections:
If the worst-case scenario of Omicron (99% upper bound IFR) and the best-case scenario of the 2014/15 flu (99% lower bound IFR) are put together, then Omicron isn’t even half as bad as a bad flu.
The point estimate for the 2014/15 flu is that it was 4.4 times more deadly than Omicron.
If Omicron isn’t even half as bad as flu, then excess deaths from COVID should not be even half as bad as those found in flu years. Weekly flu (P&I) death rates peak out at about 22 weekly deaths per million population — which would be mostly categorized as excess deaths.
Disturbingly, after Omicron dominated as the circulating variant of COVID in Chile, they recorded up to 63 weekly excess deaths per million population — from a disease that is not even half as bad as flu.
After representing 87% of all circulating COVID variants by 24 Jan 2022, here is the peak preponderance of Omicron variant in circulation in Chile:
And here is a recent week of accumulated excess mortality per million population:
On 13 Feb 2022, there were 2221.14 excess deaths per million population which had accumulated in Chile since 1 Jan 2020. But by 20 Feb 2022, exactly 1 week later, over 2280 excess deaths had accumulated (an extra 63 excess deaths per million in one week’s time).
Because Omicron doesn’t explain the excess deaths accumulated during this week — it cannot, because Omicron is not deadly enough to create that much death — then it is likely that the excess of death comes from the COVID vaccines (Chile is one of the most-vaccinated nations on Earth).
If COVID variants in circulation cannot explain weekly excess deaths of 30 to 60 per million, as has been seen in places like Chile — because Omicron is not deadly enough to be able to cause that much excess death in a nation — then we must look elsewhere for the cause.
The prime suspect is the vaccine, itself. Vaccines are the biggest change which has been made, and they are a change with mechanistic explanatory power, due to evidence regarding medical adverse events such as blood clots and many other grave events associated with them.
Omicron cannot lead to weekly excess deaths of over 60 per million population (which is about 3 times higher than the worst-ever excess weekly death seen with flu). Even if infection prevalence grew by 10% of the entire population each and every week, you’d still come up short.
You’d need the weekly incidence of new Omicron infections to be something like 30% of the entire population. At that weekly growth rate of new infections though, you’d have 100% of the population “COVID positive” within a single month.
But no nation has a COVID positivity rate of ~100% of the population, which indicates that the high excess deaths seen in Chile in February cannot be attributed to COVID.
Reference
[84% of flu infections are symptomatic] — Leung NH, Xu C, Ip DK, Cowling BJ. Review Article: The Fraction of Influenza Virus Infections That Are Asymptomatic: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Epidemiology. 2015 Nov;26(6):862-72. doi: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000340. PMID: 26133025; PMCID: PMC4586318. Available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586318/
[51,376 total deaths from 35,911,252 flu infections (flu infections=symptomatic flu cases/0.84)] — CDC data on the 2014/15 flu season. Available: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
[12 total deaths from 37,296 Omicron infections] — Ulloa AC, Buchan SA, Daneman N, Brown KA. Estimates of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Severity in Ontario, Canada. JAMA. Published online February 17, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.2274. Available: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2789408