The world is likely sicker now than it's been in 100 years

The world is living through a unique moment: In the past five or six weeks, the Omicron coronavirus variant has likely gotten more people sick than any similar period since the 1917-18 flu pandemic, according to global health experts…

In England, more than one in six residents are estimated to have caught the coronavirus since Omicron emerged in late November, surveys and modeling by the Office for National Statistics indicate. In Denmark, about one in five have caught the virus, and in Israel one in nine, authorities estimate.

“This is an unbelievably unique moment when so many people get infected by a pathogen at the same time,” said Christopher Murray, the director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks global health.

Roughly one in five Americans had contracted Omicron by the mid-January peak, a number that could double by the time the surge ends in mid-February, Trevor Bedford, a virologist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, estimated. “Having ~40% of the population infected by a single pathogen in the span of 8 weeks is remarkable and I can’t think of an obvious modern precedent. Flu seasons generally have perhaps 10% infected in the span of 16 weeks,” he wrote on Twitter.