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To be honest, I haven't seen anything that suggests Omicron BA.2 is really any more of a concern than Omicron BA.1. Doesn't seem to be exploding the cases, nor causing more deaths, nor having any more or less immunity evasion.

But I figured it was worth passing along...

I would guess they had folks review the data and holding meetings on it, but I'm talking about "us" in the public, I can't think of many who would delve into it, it's not their job to do it.  It's the job of folks at the FDA to review the clinical data, and they do it as their routine job.  There were multiple clinicals on several vaccine types in various countries.  I'm pretty sure most of the paperwork is things like consent forms, data tables, lists of who ran the clinical, signed forms that it was run according to Hoyle, stuff like that.  Boring.

The FDA boys would flip through that for the data on the actual clinical results.

I've been involved in suits before, and this is indeed a typical tactic by one side or the other.

And it does take time to go through material requested by the other side in disclosure to ensure nothing is being leaked.  I'm sure the clinical reports include a lot of pages with personal information of the test subjects that have to be excised, legally, plus their signed consent forms, and a whole lot of other pagination of no real relevance.

We've had MANY clinical trials on several COVID vaccines, it's sort of hard to imagine somehow all the people involved were coopted into agreeing to something nefarious.

• The shape of the cases curve continues to show the same trend as previously. Sharp peak followed by sharp decline. They peaked at a 7-day MA of ~23K cases/day, and they're now down to ~3K/day in the span of a little more than a month.
• Their curve for Delta was a much wider version of this, but critically their Delta wave ended months before Omicron hit. So there were basically no significant lingering Delta infections that hit. Their cases/day were <300 before Omicron appeared.
• This means that the death numbers were almost entirely Omicron. Prior to Omicron, they were somewhere near the ~25 deaths/day range. Omicron increased that to a peak of around 130/day, a fivefold increase.
• Of critical importance though is that on roughly similar case numbers (slightly higher peak for Omicron, slightly longer peak for Delta), the Omicron mortality rates appear to be about 25-33% that of Delta.
• Also important is that the SA death graph appears to be showing that not only have the Omicron deaths plateaued, but that they're dropping. It's too early to really prove that, but they're 10% down from the Omicron deaths peak and nothing in the numbers point to that going back up at this time.

• The shape of the case curve looks similar to South Africa. Because it's delayed about 2 weeks after SA, they're now only down 50% from their peak in cases (~180K/day down to ~90K/day). Right now there's a little blip where cases have flattened over 2-3 days, but I would expect the downward trend to continue.
• Their Delta wave never ended. They were seeing daily case rates ranging from the high 20Ks to the low 40Ks from the start of the Delta wave all the way until Omicron hit. Therefore it's impossible to really see the impact of Omicron on its own. However, unlike SA, their cases spiked WAY above any other point in the pandemic, as mentioned reaching a daily 7-day MA peak of ~180K.
• The deaths/day, at peak Delta, were about 170/day. Right now it has increased and plateaued about 270/day, or 60% higher than their Delta peak.
• Critical is that this should be considered additive on top of Delta, as some percentage of those still dying are dying of Delta, not Omicron. Serious epidemiologists might be able to tell you how many of each are occurring, but I don't have access to those kind of numbers.
• The daily death count appears to have plateaued, and that makes sense because we're now just past 3 weeks out from their cases peak. I expect the decline to start in the next week.

• I'm confident that we've passed the Omicron cases peak. Our peak was a 7-day MA of ~800K/day right at Jan 14-15, so two weeks ago. We're now down >25% from that, under 600K.
• We're not dropping quite as quickly as SA or the UK, but that makes sense. The USA is a much larger population and is much more geographically spread out. That creates a bit of a smoothing function on these rates; it doesn't hit everywhere all at once. I.e. for the four largest states, NY hit their peak around Jan 10, Florida around Jan 12, California around Jan 14, and Texas around Jan 16. So the four largest states had roughly a 1-week spread in their peak dates. Those four states equal the population of SA and the UK combined.
• Like the UK, the US never got rid of Delta. We definitely had a Delta "peak" of ~165K cases/day in late August, and it had dropped to ~70K by Nov. But in early Dec, after Thanksgiving celebrations and travel, that number had climbed north of 100K before Omicron hit. So when it comes to both infections and deaths, like the UK we can't entirely separate what is a lingering Delta death and what is an Omicron death.
• That said, the peak deaths for Delta were just north of 2000/day, occurring (predictably) about 3 weeks into September, or 3 weeks after the Delta cases peaked. Delta deaths hit a trough under 1000/day at one point, but post-Thanksgiving jumped back up to the 1300s range before Omicron was factored in.
• Current death rates (some Omicron/some Delta, I'm sure) have now climbed to >2200/day, or already 10% higher than the Delta peak and 10% higher than the original wave in early 2020. This is still below the 2020-21 holiday/winter peak where we were seeing ~3500/day. Of note is that during that period, our case numbers peaked at ~250K/day, whereas Omicron is over 3x higher. 
• That said, if we're only two weeks out from our Omicron peak, I expect the deaths numbers to continue rising for the next week or so.
• I don't think we'll hit the peak of 3500/day, despite the massive case numbers. My guess is that we'll plateau for a little while around 2700-2800/day before dropping. I won't be shocked to see that number flirt with 3000, but 3500 would be a major surprise to me.