Main Coronavirus / Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[dsr-burnley]

I've not seen specific omicron figures before - interesting and useful, don't know if it's done every day
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1042543/20211220_OS_Daily_Omicron_Overview.pdf

Working on those numbers, I read it that there are 45,145 confirmed cases of omicron up to 19th December, and 14 of them have died.

Further down the table for English cases suggests an average of 4 or 5 days since the case was identified.

A useful thing to remember is that in any given group of 45,000 people, a number will die each day. Roughly speaking, 1% of any randomised group die each year, which would be 451 per year, or 1.2 per day. So in four of five days, we would expect purely on the law of averages, 5 or 6 omicron victims to die. We have 14. Are those extra 8 significant?

What we don't know, of course, is how many of those people were dying anyway. The most likely place for omicron testing to be done thoroughly, I would think, is on admission to hospital. Those 14 deaths may well have been admitted to hospital with something fatal that wasn't coronavirus and died of that; the coronavirus being something that was discovered on routine testing on admission. More info needed.

 

[dsr-burnley]

Interesting graphs here.

Graph 3 is daily cases for coroanvirus in South Africa since it started. Four waves, the last one is the highest.

Graph 6 is daily deaths for coronavirus in South Africa, Only three waves, The fourth hasn't happened. November 25th was when cases started to take off, which gives it 24 days to start having an impact - and it hasn't.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/

 

[Notters]

Interesting graphs here.

Graph 3 is daily cases for coroanvirus in South Africa since it started. Four waves, the last one is the highest.

Graph 6 is daily deaths for coronavirus in South Africa, Only three waves, The fourth hasn't happened. November 25th was when cases started to take off, which gives it 24 days to start having an impact - and it hasn't.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/

Hope you're right, but it still looks like it could be creeping in at the end there?

 

[Fat Boy Fat]

Hope you're right, but it still looks like it could be creeping in at the end there?

Indeed, it is a very small dataset, and not knowing the full information behind the figures can mean a wrong hypothesis can be generated, however...

Comparing the last 7 days SA death figures to the previous has seen a 76% increase in deaths, with deaths rising from 173 to 305 in the comparable periods.

It should be noted there was an unusually large return on December 20th, of more than double any other day in the period covered, which may need some explanation that you don't get from cold hard figures alone.

 

[sparkie]

I was merrily going along thinking that Omicron was a mild variant.

But then I saw this :

[Tweet]1473053009219366917[/Tweet]


Is it fake ?

 

[Poojah]

I was merrily going along thinking that Omicron was a mild variant.

But then I saw this :

[Tweet]1473053009219366917[/Tweet]


Is it fake ?

It’s not particularly visible here, in data reported by the South African government.

https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa

This is the outlook for Guateng province, the epicentre of Omicron.



Still fairly small in comparison to previous waves. Excess deaths is definitely the right metric to watch - when you have a lot of people with Covid at one time, a lot of people are going to die WITH it regardless of the actual cause, so this will give you the best clue as to what’s really going on.

 

[Fat Boy Fat]

I was merrily going along thinking that Omicron was a mild variant.

But then I saw this :

[Tweet]1473053009219366917[/Tweet]


Is it fake ?

Not sure how accurate it is, as the UK excess death doesn't tie in with this...

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1466016249729761292/photo/1

 

[dsr-burnley]

Hope you're right, but it still looks like it could be creeping in at the end there?

It's creeping a bit. On 25th November, the daily average deaths was 31 after a spike such as fat boy fat mentions. After the 20th December spike, the average is 44. But that's when cases rose from 300 per day (October to mid-November) to 3,000 per day three weeks ago to 10,000 per day 2 weeks ago. It's a tiny rise in deaths relative to the increase in cases and might well be explained just by the number of people admitted to hospital for something else and omicron is an incidental.

 

[pb21]

Interesting graphs here.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/

I'm a bit skeptical of this data.



It appears the peak of the 4th wave has already passed, daily cases and the 3- 7-day moving averages are declining, with the 4th wave effectively as high as previous waves. On that basis total omicron cases will be much fewer than previous waves...

 

[beorhthelm]

I was merrily going along thinking that Omicron was a mild variant.

But then I saw this :

[Tweet]1473053009219366917[/Tweet]


Is it fake ?

manipulated, the first reply i saw shows when zoomed out the uptick is a blip on long term trend.

 

[dazzer6666]

manipulated, the first reply i saw shows when zoomed out the uptick is a blip on long term trend.

Similar chart, longer time period. Lies, damned lies and statistics eh ?

 

[macbeth]

All live/sporting events in Wales now BCD indefinitely. So much for those vaccine passports working, eh?

 

[LamieRobertson]

All live/sporting events in Wales now BCD indefinitely. So much for those vaccine passports working, eh?

Will there be border controls to stop anyone from Wales popping over to watch a game until it’s BCD in England

 

[nicko31]

All live/sporting events in Wales now BCD indefinitely. So much for those vaccine passports working, eh?

So kids can't play an under 12's match, but you can still go into an unventilated pub or restaurant?

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) Tweeted:
Great work by @GuptaR_lab and colleagues on Omicron suggesting:
- High escape from NAbs
- Reduced spike cleavage efficiency
- Lower infectivity of lung cells
- Similar/higher infectivity of epithelia
- Impaired fusogenicity / ability to form syncytia
1/
https://t.co/PppJQ7JySX https://t.co/VGAV7ZNmyC

 

[Driver8]

Will there be border controls to stop anyone from Wales popping over to watch a game until it’s BCD in England

Hope not, I have Everton tickets!

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

I have, and it’s big for sure. The questions we don’t yet know the answers to however are; how fast can it keep transmitting at that rate, what percentage of people require hospital care and what percentage of those who do, go onto die?

The first question is probably the one we know the least about right now, and if the South Africa data is likely to be ‘dodgy’ anywhere through the funnel then it’s going to be cases. But in that case, and cases there are in fact way, way higher than even basic extrapolations would assume, then that would be a pointer towards an even lower CFR, perhaps.

If three jabs offer 80% protection against infection (which was initially mooted though I don’t know how robust this figure is), then I would hope we could get on top of it relatively quickly - at least as far as the most vulnerable are concerned.

Very very early signs showing that it might have peaked

 

[Poojah]

Very very early signs showing that it might have peaked

That’s certainly the pattern now being exhibited in SA. As you say, early days but that’s certainly how it’s at least beginning to look. How much of that is due to the characteristics of Omicron and how much is down to changes in human behaviour I don’t know, but I’ve not heard stories of strict lockdowns down there.

 

[Poojah]

That’s certainly the pattern now being exhibited in SA. As you say, early days but that’s certainly how it’s at least beginning to look. How much of that is due to the characteristics of Omicron and how much is down to changes in human behaviour I don’t know, but I’ve not heard stories of strict lockdowns down there.

Hospitalisations also falling in South Africa.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...9-hospitalisations-fall-sharply-south-africa/

 

[LamieRobertson]

Hope not, I have Everton tickets!

Lol…sorry I forgot about you….helicopters provided for special people

(I’d give up if border controls came in )