I disagree. It is hopeful. Australia’s hospitalisations and deaths are remaining very low, the same as everywhere else with omicron. That shows that vaccination is enough to keep the impact low, without a high rate of prior infection.
The focus on the number of cases is misleading. We should be looking at hospitalisations and deaths.
Watch this excellent short video from ABC News with an overview of the latest stats from Australia:
The evidence suggests that rapid booster roll-out will certainly help.
We are starting to get that but it is necessarily a little speculative in places simply because places that have high-quality data and analysis (like the UK) also have a much smaller proportion of completely un-exposed people.
A shame but it was always going to happen sooner or later, Starting from a low level still gives time to boost the most vulnerable though.
You’re probably - very likely - right, but Omicron was discovered only 34 days ago.Some percentage of infectees could drop dead on day 45 for all we know. Yes unlikely, but we clearly know little about Omicron mortality and will not for a few weeks.
Yep. Highly vaccinated Denmark, for example, where Omicron is setting all sorts of records might be a useful example. Currently, their peak is December 27th of this year, i.e. two days ago.
Last time they had a big CoVID wave, over a year ago, there was a 10 day gap between when their new cases peaked and their hospital admissions did (12/18/2020 - 12/28/2020). There was a full 28 days gap between their new case and their new death peaks (12/18/2020 - 1/15/2021).
While I suspect Omicron will be less severe, I’ll be more confident in that when we’ve actually gathered the necessary data to back that up. For Denmark, that is probably still 3.5 weeks (or more) away.
That wouldn’t happen with any coronavirus infection. There is no delayed effect like that for individuals with coronavirus infections.
The incubation period for symptoms is about 3 days with omicron, as reported in the NYT yesterday, compared with 4-6 days with delta.
The time lag between the increase in cases and the increase in hospitalizations has been about 10 days with omicron in South Africa, the same as with delta.
The length of hospitalization has been an average of about 3 days with omicron in SA and the UK, compared with 8 days for delta, and a far lower percentage of patients are in ICU. Almost all the people in hospital with omicron are unvaccinated.
That’s true but of course when we talk about peaks we also need be clear on the relative sizes of those peaks (in order to assess relative risks of omicron) and we can already see that hospitilalisations and deaths are not behaving the same way in omicron waves as they did previously.
I’d be very surprised if, even waiting for the peaks, we get anywhere near previous rates.
We also know nothing at all about the incidence of “long omicron”. I agree that the preliminary data looks good, at least for vaccinated people. I fully expect the increase in deaths to be lower than in previous waves. But what fraction of people will be left with brain fog, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.?
Here’s some news:
I did a bit of playing around with the data as that is certainly valid, and just looking at the UK for example, shows that the currently offset deaths are quite a bit lower than their peak from last year. The problem is that drilling deeper shows that it’s hard to tell if that’s due to Omicron or due to vaccinations in general.
While each country handles CoVID differently and they each have reporting quirks that make it difficult to get a handle on the lag between new cases and deaths, I built a workbook to let me try to get at least an idea on the lag for each country. Using the UK, since they seem to come up a lot when discussing severity, it appears that the last peak showed about a 16 day offset between case and death as shown below (images are a bit small, but you can reproduce it yourself at the workbook link above):
When you zoom out with that same 16 day offset, you’ll notice that even though cases have risen drastically, deaths haven’t. But then you’ll also notice that the offset death metric stopped before the Omicron peak, as 16 days have yet to even elapse since they started getting slammed.
The coolest thing for me in this process was when I removed the most recent peak over the past week or two which had thrown the relative values in each axis way off, you clearly see the impact of the vaccine at work. The problem is that we don’t know if it’s Omicron or the vaccine (or my best guess, a combination of both) that’s doing the trick right now.
For anyone who might nerd out on data like myself, the workbook allows to you pick any country (or all combined), any date range, and any offset between 0 and 60 days. I was going to add hospital admissions to the chart, but the data source (Our World in Data) stores that as a weekly number, which makes it tricky to offset accurately.
After diving pretty deeply, I do think it’s likely that Omicron is less severe, but I would hold off for now on devising policy around that notion.
That’s nice work, thanks for that. I don’t play around too much with the figures but my wife does and she’s coming to the same conclusion for much the same reason.
I’ve no doubt that the UK data wonks have better stratified data that is also driving the hedging policy that we currently see. i.e. not leaping to higher level restrictions yet (because the figures aren’t getting too bad) but reserving the right to do so (because the full picture isn’t yet in)
Here’s some news:
Tho:
The number of Americans now in the hospital with COVID-19 is running at around 60,000, or about half the figure seen in January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
But
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed over the past two weeks from an average of 1,200 per day to around 1,500.
It’s great to have confidence, but you just don’t know this. There have been all sorts of delayed and lagging effects and deaths from covid. Blood clots/strokes and heart attacks from covid damage have killed people after they had seemingly recovered.
I’m convinced now that Omicron is probably much milder than Delta, and it is important to remember that a much milder disease running through the population this fast will have a lower hospitalization rate and death rate, but will still kill many people in a short time. There’s a difference between pointing at positive numbers and being hopeful that they represent the positive ultimate outcome, and just minimizing legitimate concerns about what could happen.
There’s a difference between following the data and using some common sense, and being obsessively negative and pessimistic.
There’s also a difference between making your best guess at what incomplete data portends, and being certain that your best guess is correct.
My best guess is the same as yours, or close. But i believe there’s still a great deal of uncertainty.
It’s really too soon to know what omicron means for mortality or long covid.
Boy, you go away for a few days and things go to Hell, Directly to Hell, no passing “Go”, no collecting $200.
On the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus map the entire country, with the exception of Maine, is in the red, meaning that the seven-day-averaged New Reported COVID Cases are going up in 49 states, DC, and Puerto Rico. Several states have hit dramatically high new record highs:
New York – 41545 as of Dec 28, well over twice the previous high on January 10
Massachusetts – 7647 set on Christmas Day over 1000 more than the previous record set on January 9
New Jersey – 15945 set on Dec 26, well over twice the previous high from Jan. 12
Connecticut – 5102 set Dec 28, getting close to twice the previous high set January 10
Illinois – 19190 – 1.5 times the previous record set November 10, 2020
Washington (state) – 5909 set yesterday, almost 1500 more than the previous record from September
Rhode Island – 1629, eclipsing the 1380 set on January 6
Maryland – 9245 yesterday, almost three times the record set January 9
Delaware – 1055 on December 26, over 200 more than the record set in January
Washington DC – 2767 set yesterday – NINE TIMES the previous record, set in January
Florida – tied the record previously set in August (27,600)
Puerto Rico – 6738 set yesterday SIX TIMES the prior record set in April
Georgia – 9828, tying the record set in January
Virginia – 6942 set Dec 27, 800 more than the previous record set in January
Hawaii – 1566, the highest since August 30 (920)
Pennsylvania – 11001 set on Dec 27, higher than the previous record set Dec 13
That’s 14 states, one territory, and DC all with record highs set over the past few days, some of them multiple times higher than prior records, and the previous record often set a year ago. I suspect the omicron variant, combined with the holiday visiting as being responsible for this.
The rest of the states shouldn’t feel so superior – the rates are high and shooting up with incredible speed in Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Indiana, Texas, California, Colorado, and elsewhere
By the way – on the World map the US has hit a new record high of 282,000 cases, above the previous record set – of course – in January. So has everyone else
There’s a very interesting point lurking here.
It seems to me that the difference is cultural. We come from cultures that have fundamentally different attitudes to safety and risk.
In some ways the differences are counterintuitive. For example, I felt shocked at seeing photos of crowds in the US and UK doing Christmas shopping, with many people not wearing masks.
Perhaps it’s different in some other parts of South Africa, but where I live, since the pandemic really hit, I have never once seen a single person not wearing a mask in a shopping mall or supermarket. People also scrupulously spray sanitizer on their hands when entering any shop or business. I’ve very rarely seen anyone skipping this.
Yet quarantining and contact tracing have now been entirely suspended in South Africa, with no fuss or disagreement. (If you personally have covid symptoms you should still self-isolate, but nothing more.)
On the other hand, and in other ways, I feel that people in the US and UK are excessively overcautious and unreasonably risk-averse by standards here.
I need to think about this a lot more and try to work out the differences for myself, but there seems to be a whole different approach to risk management and safety.
This would be a good a topic for a research paper in the social sciences - compare approaches to risk in different countries.
An Italian guy who bragged about walking around infected and infecting other people has finally died.
284,906,146 total cases
5,438,607 dead
252,414,709 recovered
In the US:
54,656,866 total cases
844,272 dead
41,408,291 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Yes: those numbers are correct. Today was by far the most new cases recorded worldwide in a single day so far, by more than 577,000.
