And in what may initially seem to be a contradiction, Omicron can be both less severe on an individual basis, and at the same time more dangerous on an individual basis.
Most vaccinated people who get Omicron will have a mild case (still might be 10 days of the worst cold you’ve ever had, as mild mostly just means “not hospitalized”). But, some vaccinated people will have a bad case, or suffer long term consequences.
Because vaccinated people are for more likely to get Omicron than they were to catch Delta or original flavor, a vaccinated person’s chance of having complications is higher with Omicron spreading, than it was with just Delta or original spreading.
Perhaps, but people keep jumping the gun. That last date that they consider “complete” is January 1st, and we’ve had universally inconsistent holiday reporting. When their 7 day average trends down for a full week, I’ll probably get on board. That hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve been tracking that site as well and yes, they do say that the last five days’ data are incomplete - if you click on the “Data” tab it gives a figure if 41 793 for Jan 5, for example, which is clearly incomplete. But it also gives a “today” (Jan 6) figure at the top of the page (People Tested Positive) of 179,756, which was the BBC/government “official” total for Jan 6.
(Note that these figures are updated daily - these are the figures I’m seeing at 10.00 GM& on Jan 7 - they will be subsequently updated.)
Anyway, my point is that we appear to have two different things being presented on the same page. My guess is that the today figure is a first estimate and the figures in the body of the table are verified or something like that. Just saying. Read with caution.
All the same: if you compare the “today” figure with the daily figures for the end of December (more than 5 days ago), you do get a definite impression that, at least in terms of reported cases, we have plateaued.
The situation in the UK is not the same; although there have been some difficulties reported for people getting LFT kits over the Christmas period, they’ve generally been free, easy to access, and all come with a reporting code, which is recorded and linked to an app needed to go to some events. While it’s likely that there are some people not reporting taking tests, this is probably massively skewed towards the negative results, as some people are taking a lot of tests or taking them before going out places.
I’m currently waiting for the results of a -free- confirmatory PCR test, taken yesterday, which will be linked to my medical daa. This was posted to me, arriving 2 days after getting a positive LFT and symptoms on Tuesday… I could have driven to a test site 35 miles away instead of getting a test posted- today I could get a PCR appointment within 500 meters. The start of last week was probably peak test shortage here, due to the combination of high rates and holidays closing some test centres.
I will note the positive LFT had such a faint line on it that if I hadn’t been aware that I had been exposed, and wasn’t showing typical Omicron symptoms, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have noticed it
It does demonstrate the difficulties of comparing between different countries’ data.There may be delays here, but the data is being collected.
Out of interest, I was exposed at a NYE party- I think we had 13 people in attendance, all fully vaccinated (some actually vaccinated with multiple schedules, due to moving between countries), most- possibly all- boostered around 2 weeks earlier (with pfizer, if anyone’s keeping track), all had a negative LFT beforehand. 6 of us have since had a positive LFT, some confirmed with PCR, some still waiting, that I’m aware of. From what I can find out, no-one has worse than bad cold symptoms, and obviously the sample size is tiny, but that seems like a pretty high infection rate from someone testing negative and asymptomatic among fully vaxed people.
Naw, the “Today” figure is just the number of cases that were reported on that day, without regard to when the specimen was taken, which is what the first (incomplete) chart is measuring. So if you want to go with that, use the second chart. I don’t believe we can definitively say that that the second chart has plateaued either, as the highest date on that list was just a couple of days ago, January 4th.
The Province of Ontario no longer has a clear idea how many cases there are, because they started running out of testing capability and so can’t conduct enough tests. Case counts are going down but no one actually knows how many cases there really are.
…Ed Yong from the Atlantic (who has written some of the best Covid stories from the beginning) has just posted another excellent article about the pending collapse of the US Healthcare system.
Much more at the link. (Covid stories aren’t paywalled at the Atlantic)
I think that is likely an artifact of the New year’s day gap in reporting, same as with christmas day.
Todays figures are down again with the hospitalsiations up a few hundred but the ICU patients no different to pre-omicron figures.
Bolding mine. I’ll wait until we have some better evidence, since it’s probably as little as a week away. I mean the peak day for reported cases (not the day of the specimen) is only 3 days ago. On the very same chart, Dec. 10th was an all time high and then it started going down for 3 days before turning around. Then it peaked again on the 17th before going down for 4 days and then turned around again and again on the 24th, and so on and so on.
This is why PCR % positive is a better measure than raw case numbers. It has the opposite problem; it tends to be artificially high when there’s a shortage of tests. But you can compare that against the number of tests to get an idea of what’s driving it.
But it’s still true that it’s harder to know what’s happening when it’s harder to get tested.
Is that what is happening? if it were wouldn’t the death rate be much higher?
When the delta wave kicked in from mid June to early July, Cases trebled and ICU doubled over the same period, as did deaths.
For a similar period for omicron of mid-dec to now, cases have more than trebled and yet ICU and deaths have remained pretty steady. If you think people in that trebled case population are dying rather than going into ICU then we should see huge numbers more dead.
I think it likely that this is a different situation.
Deaths lag hospitalizations which lag cases. The biggest challenge with ICU and why I don’t typically use it is that it seems to only be recorded as a current total number in most places, not a new ICU admissions number. If 10 people in the ICU die and 10 new people get admitted, it stays flat. If 10 people recover and 10 people get admitted, it stays flat. If 100 people stay for a month each, it looks exactly the same as 33 people stuck there for 3 months. ICU is a helpful number from a staffing and equipment standpoint, but without more data it’s not particularly informative otherwise.
I don’t know what to think when I see a chart like this other than to be concerned that things are about to get worse, even though ICU is pretty flat.
yes, but were that the case with the current numbers then we would expect to those cases to appear as deaths instead of ICU, which we don’t see. Those people must go somewhere. Either into ICU and death or back into population.
well it isn’t behaving in the same as it did back in June/July.
Perhaps charting the figures for the June/July delta ramp up might show that difference more clearly?
