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An Omicron Hypothesis
Omicron doesn’t kill people nearly as much as earlier variants of Covid. But does it kill people much at all? Not long ago, you could look at global data or country-specific data for places that have a lot of cases of Omicron at Worldometer and see something interesting: Despite epic spikes in the case numbers, deaths were fewer than for any previous spike.
That seems like it would be a big deal: The rates skyrocketing in these Omicron waves with the death numbers falling in absolute terms and the death rates plummeting dramatically.
But deaths are a lagging indicator, and we needed a few more weeks to confirm that Omicron is killing fewer people overall despite its massive transmissibility. And we still need a few weeks.
It sure looks good in the UK: The Omicron wave seems to be receding, and the death numbers are nowhere near the numbers for the last wave. Likewise South Africa, ahead of the UK. And in some other places that appear to be a bit earlier in the Omicron wave, it sure looks promising. Turkey. Italy. Brazil.
Enter the USA: If I’m reading this chart right, death rates look like they’re just about to pass the Delta wave death rates.
Dang.
So maybe Omicron is still killing people, and killing them in numbers enough that its dominance is not a good thing in absolute terms: massive transmission rates, massive case numbers, much lower death rate, and still more deaths overall.
Or . . . maybe not that exactly.
Suppose for a moment that the way things look just now is the way they are: In the UK and South Africa, Omicron killed fewer people than any previous version of the virus, even while spreading to more people and, conveniently, giving them the best immunity so far; but in the USA it actually killed more people!
Why would that be?
Is it because the USA has a lower vaccination rate? Not likely. Check the NY Times vaccination tracker: In the second-dose and third-dose numbers, the UK is significantly leading the US, but it only leads 78 percent to 75 percent in first-dose numbers. More importantly, South Africa’s rates are much lower than the USA.
But here’s something that fits that data, something that the USA has more of than either the UK or South Africa:
America is a very fat country.
So here is an Omicron hypothesis for your consideration: Maybe Omicron has massive transmission rates and case numbers, a much lower death rate, and lower deaths overall–except for where obesity rates are high.
If that’s the truth, things are still worse than I’d hoped. But still a lot better than they were.
But I don’t know what’s true. We could look at the numbers over the next few weeks and compare them to this Wikipedia chart of countries by obesity rates: Find countries with obesity rates comparable to the USA, wait until their Omicron waves come and go, and then look over the death rates. And watch various countries now having Omicron spikes, see if they follow the pattern of the UK and South Africa, and then check to see if they are significantly less obese than the USA.
In the meantime, and speaking of not knowing things, I don’t know how the CIA figures out obesity rates; but that’s where the Wikipedia chart comes from–the CIA World Factbook. And I don’t know if the USA is overreporting in some way that makes its data largely useless–deaths with Covid reported as deaths from Covid, that sort of thing.
And I didn’t know, in a previous post drawing in part from Worldometer numbers, how much the case rates were going to go up and down again and again and again. (An updated post, including a partial retraction of the earlier one, is in the works.)
Hello, my name is Socrates, and I don’t know anything. But here is a plausible hypothesis about Omicron. What do you think?
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It’s a nobrainer, because bodyfat tends to sequester vitamin D in inactive form. Your immune system needs vitamin D to function well.
Very scary – because people that need hospitalized or surgery can’t get in – too many sick people still – after two years of this!! Not to mention the supply chain shortages, including meds.
It would have to be an estimate. We don’t sequence the genome from each and every patient. Sequencing virus genomes is relatively cheap these days, but doing it on such a scale would be expensive, and not that useful compared to other things we might be doing.
Two notes: maybe what’s being reported in the news isn’t entirely accurate, as you observe. Second, Massachusetts has a state-run health care system, doesn’t it?
As Seawriter mentioned, above, I very much doubt that the virus is actually more or less dangerous in different places. More likely, outcomes are tied directly to the different strategies employed.
Not necessarily. Like hotels, hospitals need to run routinely at 75%+ bed occupancy to cover their fixed overhead, and generally expect to operate at 80 or 85% + bed occupancy to also be able to build up financial reserves and funds to expand or to purchase new equipment. Those hospitals showing less than 60% occupancy are probably hemorrhaging money and either do or will soon need hefty subsidies to keep their doors open. Probably most of the hospitals showing 60-69% occupancy as well.
I have heard (but have less certainty) that during normal winter flu season (i.e., now), occupancy rates of 95%+ are not unusual.
I’m sure there are particular hospitals and maybe even regions that are experiencing unprecedented strain on their capacity (and some of our Ricochetti have described their personal encounters with capacity problems). But a lot of hospitals at 90% occupancy is not by itself indicative of a capacity problem, absent staffing issues due to illness or artificial constraints (like vaccine mandates) on staff quantity.
Omicron is what we’ve needed since Jan. 2020. The vid is evolving toward more copies of itself, which means less virulence. This is what viruses do. All our quackery has been to slow this natural and welcome evolution.
No solid evidence yet that Omicron is more or less virulent. More people are vaccinated, so that in itself is going to make the death/case rate go down. The data to confirm that it’s less virulent have yet to come in. It’s not an easy thing to know for sure. (I might place a very small bet on less virulent, though.)
The very observation Marci cites is solid evidence. At some point, beans will be counted. Whether that improves on the first-order observation will depend as much on who counts as anything else. We don’t live in a perfect world.
[Edit: Well, actually we do. It’s just not tidy.]
In our area nursing homes have a high voter turn out. Often nearly 105% of listed capacity.
The mortuary industry may have excess capacity.
Malone or McCullough or Mercola or Berenson….
Typical flu season 36,000 dead that is ALOT less than 400,00…..
91% probably a significant overestimation of the virus itself- reports I have seen is more like 25% less lethal- but we have the added benefit of immunity from the vaccine & prior infections (plus the unfortunate fact of many deaths among the most vulnerable already -thx Cuomo!).
While obesity seems a major factor in many Covid deaths, misreporting cause for political reasons also seem more rampant in the USofA, the question arising “Was the death BECAUSE of Covid or was it merely death WITH Covid? Not sure we’ll ever get a good answer on that one…
Unlikely- the Spanish Flu era didn’t have over sanitization and many deaths were younger patients. Systemic inflammatory response is the basis of many ICU deaths in this country and has been for decades. Learning to control the inflammatory response is a major challenge but will probably be greatly aided by the development of good anti-viral meds.
1)The financial strain is because ELECTIVE PROCEDURES ARE THE CASH COW OF HOSPITALS & THEY GET CANCELLED WHEN THE HOSPITAL IS FULL. Despite some crazy people on Ricochet claiming there is a “bonus” for COVID-treating Medicare patients (who are most of the sick COVID patients) is a money losing proposition by DESIGN. You can not blame the hospitals when Medicare purposely under pays them-they do not make the rules, medicare does. Doctors and hospitals lose money on Medicare but make money on elective procedures on insurance patients. The pandemic has stressed hospitals since many have had to postpone elective procedures.
2) The USA leads the world in ICU beds-which are far more important in a pandemic like COVID. That is why Italy was so rapidly overwhelmed- they had few ICU beds (but more hospital beds than the US-but most were nearly useless)and why the UK abruptly changed their policy and started lockdowns- b/c the UK has very few ICU beds and the government freaked out when they saw what was happening in Italy.
The idea that virus mutate to be less lethal is based on almost no facts..oft repeated but no supporting data just conjecture:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-posts/viruses-and-other-pathogens-can-evolve-become-more/
https://medium.com/everyday-science/no-viruses-dont-always-evolve-to-become-less-deadly-10cd3ff32888
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-evolve-180975343/
I believe that trend is “Governmental power grows over time.”
The deaths may very well be. I hear that Delta is basically gone now, but that is probably referring to new cases.
Suggested YouTube channel.
Evidence, maybe. Solid evidence, no. By solid evidence I mean evidence that does a thorough job of excluding other possible explanations. It’s hard work.
Not to my knowledge, it is not.
The two biggest healthcare systems in our state are (1) the Mass General and Brigham and Women’s system, and (2) the Lahey Clinic, Deaconess, and Beth Israel system. There have been countless mergers and acquisitions over the past decade. I haven’t kept track of them all. I’m not sure what you mean by “state-run.” These are private hospitals still, although they might be nonprofit organizations of some sort.
Regina Herzlinger advises hospitals. They actually like her very much. I don’t think she meant to imply that the hospitals are to blame here. The formulas are out of whack, as you’ve said.
I’m not sure what happened around the rest of the country, but Cape Cod Hospital ended up drowning in red ink last year and had to cancel some expansion plans it had and sell off some property. In no universe could it be said that the hospitals were financially prepared for the pandemic.
:-) Goodness. I need to clarify that I do not know what viruses are circulating at this moment–I’ve read conflicting and confusing news accounts of what’s happening here.
Data from the rest of the world is relevant. South Africa had a very low vax rate and saw deaths continuing to decline even as omicron peaked (and has now retreated). Same pretty much everywhere. The US is still treating this as the black death, I think purely for political reasons.
Romneycare.
It tends to create a lot of “one size fits all” behaviors.
400,000 this winter? I highly doubt that.
One day after all this is over and we’ve looked at the data and lynched the public health officials who were wrong, we’ll look back at this and laugh.
36K/yr for flu compared to >800,000/2 yrs for COVID- the math ain’t hard. Or should we ignore deaths that are not during the winter (did they die from winter not with winter?). Do you think people who die during the summer aren’t just as dead?
400,000 deaths a year sounds like a lot if you say it quickly and don’t think about it, but it really isn’t. About 660,000 people die from heart disease in this country every year. Another 610,000 die from cancer. So, 400,000 deaths due to Covid does not put it in Black Death territory. At present we do not know how many of those 400,000 were dying from cancer or heart disease. Colin Powell was dying from stage 4 cancer, but because he had covid when he died he was counted as a covid death. I am pretty sure he was not a one-off.
People die. Them’s the rules. You get born, you die. What is important is not how you die. It is how you live. Cowering in fear over a relatively minor disease is no way to live. Terrorizing children over a disease that barely affects them is no way to live. People can choose to live that way if they like. I don’t.
We shouldn’t put excessive costs on the children & the blue collar types- but we should not dismiss the deaths of hundreds of thousands- even if they were old. It is clear that many policy decisions no longer make sense (like school closures, closing small business but keep open Walmart & Amazon), and that the costs of the pandemic interventions have had disparate impact (ie the federal workers, Silicon valley, press can easily work remotely- but not a waitress or bartender). The effects of school closure has been severe on the poorest children (funny how the left uses minority kids all the time EXCEPT when they close the school). But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the pandemic and let it rip. We should keep schools open as much as possible (especially under 12 year olds) and keep a light touch on the economy now that we have good mitigation of bad outcomes thru vaccines. The odds are we will now have another endemic flu like disease- but the flu ain’t nothing, despite its familiarity.
Many here say “its just the flu”- but the flu itself has a significant impact and it will not be easy just blithely absorbing the cost of a 2nd flu. In the past hospitals often became strained during flu season-and this will add to it. So we will need added hospital capacity-and that ain’t cheap. We will need to spend more on vaccine technology, anti-viral med research and improve our system of surveillance for outbreaks in the rest of the world. We need to up the stockpile of PPE (and not let people like Obama/Biden deplete it and fail to restock it like they did with H1N1). I have seen estimates that endemic COVID will cost up to additional 72K lives/yr from now on (not sure how omicron effects those estimates-the most optimistic is 18K deaths/yr)-and that will be added to the annual flu toll. The flu already has an annual economic burden of > $90B in the US- and COVID might easily add that much more. Even for the feds $180B+ is real money.
2007 article- cost of flu $87B. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC1885332/