# By the time Omicron subsides, what percentage of humans do you think will never have had COVID? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [January 2, 2022, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068 "2022-01-02T05:18:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2022, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/1 "2022-01-02T05:18:36Z")
I’m wondering how specific we can get with all the “with how contagious Omicron is, everyone’s gonna get it eventually” theory. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2022, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/2 "2022-01-04T14:59:39Z")
I’m guessing by the time this is over 99% of us will either be infected with covid, vaccinated against it, or both. We live in a very interconnected world in 2022. Unless you’re a hermit who lives in the wilderness, or you never leave your bedroom without a hazmat suit on you are going to get it. Amongst the very few who will remain blissfully unaffected: the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, an island in the Indian Ocean where an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe lives in isolation from the rest of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2022, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/3 "2022-01-04T15:31:40Z")
Infected OR vaxxed, or both, maybe. But I don’t think everyone who’s vaxxed is going to get a breakthrough infection. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2022, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/4 "2022-01-05T21:46:19Z")
Virtually everyone will have SARS-CoV-2 virus particles entering their body at some point. The fully vaccinated might even be lucky enough to have no symptoms from it. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2022, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/5 "2022-01-05T21:48:04Z")
That’s not the same as having it, though. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2022, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/6 "2022-01-09T05:14:17Z")
Some potentially useful data points: > An estimated one third of the world’s population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. > [1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics - PMC](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/) So, two thirds of the world never caught the Spanish Flu. I tried in vain to find similar stats for smallpox, but it’s worth noting that the virus circulated for centuries without humans achieving natural herd immunity. Even though no one could get it twice, it took a vaccine to eliminate it. That, and the fact that survivors typically had scars, and most people who lived during those centuries didn’t have those scars, makes it pretty clear we never even came close to everyone having been infected. Similarly, while data from the Black Death is obviously going to be a bit sketchy, most sources agree that the bubonic plague itself killed about half of those infected, while other forms of the disease had a 90-100% fatality rate, yet the plague wiped out “only” 30-60% of Europe’s population–again, suggesting at least some people managed not to catch it at all. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z7r7hyc/revision/3](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z7r7hyc/revision/3) ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2022, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/7 "2022-01-09T06:03:19Z")
> [@Esprise\_Me](#): > > > An estimated one third of the world’s population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. > > [1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/) > > So, two thirds of the world never caught the Spanish Flu. I don’t think that’s a conclusion we can draw because a [huge percentage](https://www.jwatch.org/fw108600/2014/03/17/most-flu-asymptomatic) (up to 75%) of people who test positive for the flu are asymptomatic, and there’s no reason to think that’s a new development. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2022, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/8 "2022-01-10T00:09:46Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I don’t think that’s a conclusion we can draw because a [huge percentage](https://www.jwatch.org/fw108600/2014/03/17/most-flu-asymptomatic) (up to 75%) of people who test positive for the flu are asymptomatic, and there’s no reason to think that’s a new development. That’s most likely because the population has at least partial immunity to seasonal flu. Flu viruses acquire a few mutations but don’t change that much. This is known as antigenic drift. Pandemics occur when a new strain enters humans or more than one strain recombines to form a strain unfamiliar to people’s immune systems. This known as an antigenic shift and is the cause of the 1918 influenza pandemic. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2022, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/9 "2022-03-06T16:54:16Z")
I think it’s safe to say Omicron has subsided, if not disappeared; here in the U.S. our infection rates are back to where they were at the beginning of December. As of late January, one model said that just over half of the world had been infected at least once: > **[COVID Model Estimates 57 Percent of World Population Infected at Least Once](https://www.newsweek.com/covid-evaluation-model-estimates-57-percent-world-population-infected-least-once-1672440)** > > The model projects that almost all nations will be over the Omicron surge by mid-March, a briefing said. It also said there would be high immunity left behind. An LA Times article from mid-February stated that 73% of Americans had immunity to Omicron (they were counting those who had boosters but had never been infected as well as those who had natural immunity), and estimated that number could rise to 80% by mid-March: > **[73% of Americans are now immune to Omicron by one estimate. But is that enough?](https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-02-17/estimated-73-us-immune-omicron-covid)** > > The Omicron wave that assaulted the U.S. this winter also bolstered Americans' immunological defenses, but complacency is ill-advised. But a study recently published in the Washington Post that relies on data taken through the end of January estimated that only 43% of Americans had actually had COVID. > **[140 million Americans have had coronavirus, according to blood tests analyzed...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/02/28/covid-cases-nationwide/)** > > The estimates, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show that about 43 percent of the country has been infected by the coronavirus. The study shows that the majority of children, 58 percent, have also been infected. So it seems pretty clear that everyone’s _not_ gonna get Omicron–maybe as many as half of us still haven’t and might never. There could be more variants coming, and I still wouldn’t be surprised if the combined population of vaxxed people and infected people eventually includes almost everyone. But I still think that a sizeable chunk of the population will never be infected with any form of COVID-19. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2022, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/by-the-time-omicron-subsides-what-percentage-of-humans-do-you-think-will-never-have-had-covid/957068/10 "2022-03-06T16:58:56Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > Virtually everyone will have SARS-CoV-2 virus particles entering their body at some point. Yes, it’s going to hinge on exactly how we define “getting” it, which ultimately will not be a bright line.