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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?
Published in General
Mrs R did it today, too. We will get four to add to our little stockpile. I’d rather Biden would unleash market forces to make them easily affordable in whatever quantities we want, for whichever type of test we prefer, which would also make them affordable for the government to purchase to distribute to those who cann0t easily afford them (which should be a small number of people).
Ok. I think I’ll stick with the dictionary definitions, but your definition works well enough, and looks like the first sentence of the Wikipedia article!
Hopefully he creates so much scarcity that people realize that testing is pointless, and we all stop doing it!
Use a dictionary printed before 2020. If mRNA vaccines existed, or were a thing, for the past 20 years, as Johns Hopkins’ site implies, mRNA technology should be evident in the definition. :)
Not necessarily. Would a semi-automatic rifle have been evident in the definition of a firearm back in the 1780s?
Off-topic, far as I can tell.
The issue is whether a vaccine is a thing that tries to give immunity or one that actually does give immunity. I’m not aware that the latter is part of the definition of a vaccine, and it’s not a couple of dictionaries I checked.
But it is in the Wikipedia article! I also don’t much care, so use the term your way; that’s cool, as long as we know how the terms are being used.
I have had a few test over the last two years and they have not cost me. Insurance I guess. A friend of my wife got hers the other day and they charged her $80. I thought it was free but it was not for her.
I developed a bad cough last Saturday, didn’t feel well Monday, so stayed home. My boss told me I had to get a COVID test before I came back to work, So I did Tuesday, and tested positive. So far, I’ve only had the cough and a mild elevated temperature (99.4). My wife started symptoms Monday, but so far they are only a runny nose and a similar temperature to mine. We’re both in our 70’s.
Actually, my required five day quarantine ends tomorrow, though I’ll probably go back to work on Monday.
Johns Hopkins obviously says Yes.
Maybe if John Hopkins sent me an e-mail, I’d know what he’s talking about.
The Master shows how word games are done.
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Captain Kirk: Beam me up Scotty there is no…..
You can’t follow can you. Are you a bot?