Coronavirus dashboard for December 21: exponential spread is here
Coronavirus dashboard for December 21: exponential spread is here
As I warned you on Saturday, there might be some hooky-playing this week; and as I also said, that was “Omicron permitting.”
Well, Omicron warrants an update today. Because exponential spread is underway especially in those parts of the country most exposed to international visitors.
But first, in the spirit of leading indicators, let’s take a look at South Africa, where Omicron was first reported, and which has an excellent reporting system.
Here are deaths (solid line) vs. cases (dotted line) per capita for the whole country (note differences in scale) for the past year. In all previous waves of infection, including a previous wave during summer 2020 not shown, deaths followed cases by one month or less:
Cases began to rise almost exactly 5 weeks ago, from just under 300 to over 23,000 three days ago – and have already fallen back to 19,400. Meanwhile, deaths have risen from 13 four weeks ago to 44. Undoubtedly deaths will continue to rise. The question is, how much?
For some help, here is a look by Conor Kelly at cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Gauteng, the first area of South Africa to be hit:
Note that hospitalizations and deaths rose comparably in the three previous waves. This time around, hospitalizations appear to have peaked at only half the level of cases, as normalized in the graph. This is really good news. Meanwhile deaths have clearly started to rise, but there is some indication that they have stayed low longer after the onset of this wave than for previous waves. This appears to be confirmed by the following graph comparing deaths in the first two weeks of the present Omicron wave, with previous waves:
In other words, our “leading indicator” example of South Africa lends credence to the idea that hospitalizations and deaths will not be so severe, on a per capita basis, as a result of Omicron than with Delta or other prior waves.
This is good news.
Turning to the US, the CDC made a splash yesterday by announcing that its model suggests that 73% of all cases in the US now are Omicron. Here’s their graph:
But take the CDC’s announcement with a shaker full of salt. In a footnote at its “Nowcast” site, it advises that the graph is bases on four weeks of data *ending November 27,* i.e., four weeks ago! It’s confidence interval includes about 2/3’s of all possible percentages. And it made very major revisions to last week’s estimate, increasing that from 2% to about 30%. In short, the CDC’s number is *very* unreliable.
By contrast, here is Trevor Bedford’s log scale *actual* data, through 12 days ago, of cases in the US and 8 other countries:
Projecting Bedford’s trendline forward 12 days suggests that right now about 33% of all cases in the US are Omicron.
That’s a very major difference, not just because of the numbers, but because in the CDC’s version, Delta has been knocked back to about 35,000 cases, whereas in Bedford’s Delta’s number is about constant at 80-90,000 cases. In other words, the CDC has Omicron supplanting Delta, but Bedford does not, at least in the US – although his graph for South Africa does indeed suggest that Delta cases have declined by about 2/3’s since Omicron emerged at the beginning of November.
There is another intriguing trend in Bedford’s graphs, because most countries also provide a record for “other” variants in addition to Omicron and Delta. Looking at South Africa, “other” cases have risen even faster than Omicron since one month ago, and are responsible for about 10% of all cases there now. A similar trend appears to have started in Germany, the UK, and the US as well. I have not read of any explanation of this from any expert.
Finally, let’s look at where we have exponential spread in the US. Here are NY, NJ, and RI:
NY and NJ both set new records as of today. RI is not far behind.
Next, here are OH, DC, HI, and PR:
HI and PR are two tropical island oases that had been doing extremely well. Both are 80% or more vaccinated, and PR in particular recently had as few as 2 cases per 100,000 daily. This week PR shot up to 40 cases per 100,000 in *four days!*
Of course, HI and PR are tourist destinations and have heavy international travel as does the NYC area.
And of course, we all know one other State that has a similar profile: FL. Here is FL’s official case count, which they are still only updating once a week:
Rising, but still very low.
Except when you bypass the State, and get reports directly from counties and hospitals, here is what the daily total looks like (from the NYT):
As of yesterday, cases in FL were *triple* what they were just one week prior. Expect a huge increase in FL’s next weekly report this Friday.
I expect the exponential outbreak to grow both in terms of numbers and to spread throughout the entire country in the next week or two. We can hope that in the US, as in SA (and apparently in London in the UK as well), cases will peak about 30 to 40 days after the onset of the wave, and decline rapidly thereafter. And we can pray that, as appears increasingly likely in SA, the burden of hospitalizations and deaths does not grow at the same rate as cases.
Dang scientists!
Omicron Will Surge Despite Biden’s New Plan, Scientists Say
My health provider is blitzing their members with get your booster as some as you can messages. Their hospital cases are up about 25 % from the most recent low. Last Saturday the line for Covid tests wrapped around the long side of the local clinic. Yesterday there were only two or three lined up while I was there. Pre-op test – last year the same thing came back in 2-3 hours, yesterday’s test didn’t get posted for almost 14 hours. Busy much?
Is it possible…or obvious…that the failure of the death rate to keep up (proportionately) with the case rate has something to do with increase rate of vaccination?
as for the people not putting up with “harsh measures”…like masks and distancing…doe this suggest that people would rather die than wear a mask or avoid crowds? or merely that they expect the vaccine to keep them safe…if “a little bit” sick?
the economy woud survive severe distancing if the people could adjust to a slightly reduced level of spending and getting for a reasonable period time. or it could have before we got a variant that is not going to go away.
“adjust” means “share” income via “insurance” [tax and spend] so those still
working can help out those whose jobs are unavoidably shut down by the virus.
I think you are right Coberly about the effect of immunization. I think Biden knows that there is nothing he or anyone can do to prevent the spread of Omicron and all they are trying to do is reduce the harm to the health care system. I just want to know if I can get another booster after 3 months because that is when the first will be wearing off.Terry
yes. i think you are right about harm to health care system..at least, as far as i know, if you mean over-taxing doctors and nurses and crowding out other patients.
as for me, i’m kind of stuck trying to prove, or be disproved, that “if you don’t get vaccinated you are harming me” no longer makes sense if being vaccinated is no protection from getting or giving the virus. i hate lynch mobs.
i don’t know about getting the booster. my guess is that they will be glad to give you one, but you’ll have to ask them
Terry:
Is lessening the probability of dying important? Or the strengthening the potency of it? Get the shot. Other versions are on the way. Distance and wear the mask . . .
Yeah, Run I do all those things along with avoiding indoor gatherings outside of a small family bubble with all adult members vaccinated and boosted. I consider my chances of dying of Covid to be quite small. My observation is that mask wearing is down to less than 20% in my part of Indiana where around 60% of the population has had one dose and the hospitals are already at 150% of capacity. I see no end to the pandemic in my lifetime and just hope that the government continues to approve of boosters for those Americans who would prefer to die of something other than Covid. I know Israel is rolling out its 4th shot based on research that the first booster wanes after 3 months.
Omicron Infections Seem to Be Milder, Three Research Teams Report
Despite breakthrough cases, it would appear that most of the Omicron victims are those who are unvaccinated, and since this variant is so infectious, a further serious threat to hospital capacity. But those who ARE vaccinated get relatively mild symptoms.
Since Omicron is so infectious, it is very taxing to the health care system.
It is fair to blame those who refuse vaccination for spreading the disease, just as it was with the Delta variant previously, and more so. And still some quibble about what is so important about getting vaccinated if they ‘just don’t want to’, believing they are only harming themselves. This is not true. It is, in fact, ridiculous.
very c0gent argument,
i’ve been watching what exponential growth looks like, first hand…
Ohio set 3 records for new infections this week and followed that with the 2nd highest toal ever on Friday….knowing it’s worse in this corner of the state, i’d been following Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) totals as an indicator…they were averaging about a thousand new cases a day last week…on Friday, they posted 4,208 new cases….so it’s doubling every three days, just as advertised….so what does that buy us?