It was suggested very early from SA infections. The rate of rise of cases is high, and reports of it having been found in earlier and earlier samples, back to October now iirc. But, a lack of severe cases.
SA cases in hospital milder and shorter than at equivalent stage of delta, sort of results.
How many omicron deaths have there been, at this stage where there's global(ish) transmission and thousands of cases?
As far as I can find, none.
Some died from delta quickly though most took a couple of weeks
Many countries have got sequencing going now so it is being tracked quite well.
Yes it's early to predict much but it doesn't look like it's going to kill a high %age. It could have been a lot worse - they say the original SARS killed 10% and Mers higher. (Some of the bat viruses in in-vitro tests which have been done, which theoretically could transfer to humans, are astonishingly dangerous, they'd be plague proportions.)
Just playing with numbers:
If "they" are right and omi doubles in 2 days, and we have 1000 cases now, it's about one month until everyone in the country who's going to get it, will have it
(15 doublings means x32000 roughly, so that means 30 days, 32 million peeps.)
Using "Estimated rates of influenza-associated pulmonary and circulatory deaths/100,000 persons were 0.4--0.6 among persons aged 0-49 years, 7.5 among persons aged 50--64 years, and 98.3 among persons aged > 65 years." (so that's a flu) that would be about 30,000 oldest dying off. Not so bad then, but hospitals stuffed.