Well according to the actual creator of the Astra-Zeneca Vaccine, there is evidence:
"Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert, who helped to create the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, said Covid-19 had limited opportunities to evade existing immunity – which also comes from prior infection – within populations and it is likely to become less virulent.
Speaking during a Royal Society of Medicine webinar, the vaccinologist said: “The virus can’t completely mutate because the spike protein has to interact with the Ace2 receptor on the surface of the human cell in order to get inside that cell."
Asked if we could see more virulent strains – which would have more severe effects on those who become infected – Prof Gilbert said there was “no reason to suspect” that this would happen. “We tend to see a slow genetic drift of the [pandemic flu] viruses and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses,” she said. “We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don’t really ever think about very much and eventually SARS-CoV-2 will become one of those. It’s just a question of how long it’s going to take to get there and what measures we’re going to take to manage it in the meantime."
https://inews.co.uk/news/covid-variant-vaccine-resist-immunity-more-severe-oxford-jab-sarah-gilbert-1212744
Are you going to distrust the literal creator of the most widely used COVID vaccine in the world? Pray tell, is this eminent scientist who knows way more about viruses than you or me, engaging in "pure wishful thinking"?
"No evidence"?? A quick Google search will prove that while viruses do mutate to become more deadly sometimes, the long term evolution of coronaviruses in the past, along with flu viruses in the past, show that they get less deadly over time.
And the Spanish Flu, which you love to keep bringing up - is now way less deadly than the flu that we tend to get in winters today. That was the H1N1 pandemic a decade ago, people worried about it because it was the Spanish Flu but it wasn't deadly.
As for the death rate of COVID in my country - even before we had a high vaccination rate (our Delta outbreak started in June 2021 when we had 24% of the population fully vaccinated and we only reached 80% of adults fully vaccinated in November 2021) - in September the death rate was 10x lower for Delta cases than it had been for the Alpha variant:
Now the Omicron wave is ripping through Australia and we have an estimated 712 000 active cases, of which 90% are Omicron, and only 389 cases in ICU of which only 119 are on ventilators. And it's suggested that actually 70% of those cases (ICU beds) are actually Delta.
Source:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-09/covid-omicron-cases-testing-a-million-cases/100744678
So we have 10% of the active cases (Delta) causing 70% of the hospitalisation. Still wanna call this "strictly wishful thinking"??
Since the first Omicron death was confirmed in Australia, which was the 27th of December, there have been 471 COVID deaths nation wide. They absolutely were not all Omicron deaths, or even mostly Omicron deaths if the ICU numbers are to be believed. They were mostly Delta deaths.
But EVEN IF they were all Omicron deaths:
Since the first Omicron case in Australia on the 27th November 2021 there have been 1 521 095 new cases of the virus (almost certainly underreported due to the inability for the public to easily get RAT tests or PCR tests recently). Of which apparently 90% has been Omicron.
So let's say there have been 1 368 985 Omicron Cases since the 26th of November.
471 deaths over 1 368 985 is 0.000344.
That is 0.03%. Compared to the Delta death rate which was 0.4% and to the Alpha death rate which was 4%.
This is taking the worst possible interpretation on Omicron in Australia and assuming all deaths since the 26th December were from Omicron. Which we know they weren't.
So what we know is that vaccines work AND that the virus is getting less virulent over time. Now that almost every single adult in Australia is vaccinated, it's time to live our fucking lives.
With moderate caution sure. Following health guidelines etc.
But I'm going to fucking live my life.
