A) Reading Comprehension. Read the following text and answer the questions that follow.

Do the Omicron Numbers Mean What We Think They Mean?

COVID’s winter surge holds a deeper lesson about the perils of interpreting data without a full
appreciation of the context.

By Dhruv Khullar

Published in the print edition of The New Yorker, January 24, 2022, issue, with the headline
“Omicron by the Numbers.”

January 16, 2022

There’s an urban legend about a Texas man who takes a rifle to the side of his barn and sprays
bullets across the wall, more or less at random. Then he finds the densest clusters of holes and
paints a bull’s-eye around each one. Later, a passerby, impressed by this display, trots off in
search of the marksman. In a reversal of cause and effect, the Texas Sharpshooter is born.

The Sharpshooter Fallacy is often used by scientists to illustrate our tendency to narrativize data
after the fact. We may observe an unusual grouping of cancer cases and back into an explanation
for it, cherry-picking statistics and ignoring the vagaries of chance. As we muddle through covid-
19’s winter surge, the story holds a deeper lesson about the perils of interpreting data without
a full appreciation of the context. Omicron, because of its extraordinary contagiousness and its
relative mildness, has transformed the risks and the consequences of infection, but not our
reading of the statistics that have been guiding us through the pandemic. Do the numbers still
mean what we think they mean?

A coronavirus infection isn’t what it once was. Studies suggest that, compared with Delta,
Omicron is a third to half as likely to send someone to the hospital; by some estimates, the
chance that an older, vaccinated person will die of covid is now lower than the risk posed by the
seasonal flu. And yet the variant is exacting a punishing toll—medical, social, economic.
(Omicron still presents a major threat to people who are unvaccinated.) The United States is
recording, on average, more than eight hundred thousand coronavirus cases a day, three times
last winter’s peak. Given the growing use of at-home tests, this official count greatly
underestimates the true number of infections. We don’t know how many rapid tests are used
each day, or what proportion return positive, rendering unreliable traditional metrics, such as a
community’s test-positivity rate, which is used to guide policy on everything from school
closures to sporting events.

There are many other numbers we’d like to know. How likely is Omicron to deliver not an
irritating cold but the worst flu of your life? How does that risk increase with the number and
severity of medical conditions a person has? What are the chances of lingering symptoms
following a mild illness? How long does immunity last after a booster shot or an infection?
Americans aren’t waiting to find out. Last week, rates of social distancing and self-quarantining
rose to their highest levels in nearly a year, and dining, shopping, and social gatherings fell to
new lows. Half of Americans believe that it will be at least a year before they return to their pre-
pandemic lives, if they ever do; three-quarters feel that they’re as likely, or more so, to contract
the virus today—a year after vaccines became available—as they were when the pandemic
began.

Should we be focussed on case counts at all? Some experts, including Anthony Fauci, argue that
hospitalizations are now the more relevant marker of viral damage. More than a hundred and
fifty thousand Americans are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus—a higher number than
at any other point in the pandemic. But that figure, too, is not quite what it seems. Many
hospitalized covid patients have no respiratory symptoms; they were admitted for other
reasons—a heart attack, a broken hip, cancer surgery—and happened to test positive for the
virus. There are no nationwide estimates of the proportion of hospitalized patients with
“incidental covid,” but in New York State some forty per cent of hospitalized patients with covid
are thought to have been admitted for other reasons. The Los Angeles County Department of
Health Services reported that incidental infections accounted for roughly two-thirds of covid
admissions at its hospitals. (Pediatric covid hospitalizations have also reached record levels,
probably because Omicron’s transmissibility means that many more kids are contracting the
virus; there’s little evidence that the variant is causing more severe illness in them, though.)

Clarifying the distinction between a virus that drives illness and one that’s simply along for the
ride is more than an academic exercise. If we tally asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic
infections as covid hospitalizations, we risk exaggerating the toll of the virus, with all the
attendant social and economic ramifications. If we overstate the degree of incidental covid, we
risk promoting a misguided sense of security. Currently, the U.S. has no data-collection practices
or unified framework for separating one type of hospitalization from another. Complicating all
this is the fact that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish a person hospitalized “with covid” from
one hospitalized “for covid.” For some patients, a coronavirus infection can aggravate a
seemingly unrelated condition—a covid fever tips an elderly woman with a urinary-tract
infection into delirium; a bout of diarrhea dehydrates a man admitted with sickle-cell disease.
In such cases, covid isn’t an innocent bystander, nor does it start the fire—it adds just enough
tinder to push a manageable problem into a crisis.

It is a positive development that we’re able to engage in this discussion at all. With Alpha and
Delta, almost all covid hospitalizations were related to the infection. The situation is different
with Omicron—a function both of its diminished ability to replicate in the lungs and of its
superior capacity to infect people who’ve been vaccinated or previously contracted the virus.
Still, parsing the numbers in a moment of crisis can seem a subordinate aim. Omicron is imposing
an undeniable strain on the health-care system. Last week, a quarter of U.S. hospitals reported
critical staffing shortages. Many have postponed non-urgent surgeries, and some have asked
their employees to continue working even after they’ve been infected. Some states have called
in the National Guard; others have enacted “crisis standards of care,” whereby overwhelmed
hospitals can restrict or deny treatment to some patients—I.C.U. beds, ventilators, and other
lifesaving resources—in order to prioritize those who are more likely to benefit.
But this wave, too, shall pass—possibly soon. At the end of it, the vast majority of Americans
could have some degree of immunity, resulting from vaccination, infection, or both. In all
probability, we’d then approach the endemic phase of the virus, and be left with a complex set
of questions about how to live with it. What level of disease are we willing to accept? What is
the purpose of further restrictions? What do we owe one another? A clear-eyed view of the
numbers will inform the answers. But it’s up to us to paint the targets. ♦

Dhruv Khullar, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, is a practicing physician and an assistant
professor at Weill Cornell Medical College.
1. Account for the implication of the cause and effect consequence of the Texas urban legend.

2. What does the writer mean by ‘… our tendency to narrativize data after fact’?

3. How does the Sharpshooter fallacy apply to Omicron?

4. What’s the purpose of the author’s rhetorical question at the end of paragraph 2?

5. What does the writer mean when he states that the new variant exacts a punishing toll?

6. Account for the negative consequences brought about by rapid tests.

7. How relevant are figures in view of the author’s discussion?

8. Why does the writer disagree with the expert’s interpretation of covid figures?

9. How do extreme responses to the virus affect the wellbeing of a nation?

10. Explain, in your own words, the closing statement with reference to the urban legend made
by the author.
11. Provide a synonym for the underlined words and expressions. (7 in total)

B) Summary Writing: In a summary, between 100-110 words, using your own words and
strictly following the writer’s viewpoint, answer the question provided in the title by the
author: Do the Omicron Numbers Mean What We Think They Mean?