Omicron variant

[1nvest]

ONS data for England and Wales and the number of deaths in 2020, when Covid was raging and vaccines were a dream/hope, the proportion of deaths per capita were LESS than in each of 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.

2000 for instance reports a population of 52,140K and deaths of 537,877, 1.032% of the population. 2020 reports a population of 59,829K and deaths of 608,002, 1.016% of the population.

The first Covid jab in the UK given to 90 year old Margaret Keenan was on the 8th December 2020.

Lockdowns were just partial, largely useless, some paid £2.5K/month to stay at home, many others received nowt, were left with no other choice than to carry on working as usual. Roads as I recall were moderately lighter on traffic, pleasantly less congested.

[zico]

Apologies for the Daily Mail link. BBC2 Newsnight just reported the results of this study so I searched for the source and only found 2 links, one (NY Times) behind a paywall and this one so it’s all I have right now.

Anyway, South Africa has just released a report on risk of hospital admission seen during the first wave (driven by original variant), second wave (driven by the Beta variant), the third wave (driven by the Delta variant) and this latest Omicron-driven wave. The results are relative to the risk in wave one which is considered to be the 1.0 reference point. The results for adults are (numbers are approximate because I had to read them off a bar graph in the article)…

Beta: 1.1
Delta: 0.95
Omicron: 0.7

[ Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... level.html }

All the usual caveats apply about South African data not necessarily being translatable across to expected UK outcomes. Also these are interim results and I haven’t dug down into method, definitions, data set sizes etc. Even if the SA data looks robust and does translate well to the UK I find these results slightly worrying. The net figure being quoted is 20% less chance of hospital admission for Omicron vs Delta for adults. If Omicron cases do run riot in the UK such that we do have a huge surge in total case numbers is 20% less severe(*) really enough “headroom” to stop our hospitals becoming overwhelmed?

This is only interim data so if it is overly pessimistic, or we do much better in the UK maybe because the booster program outruns the spread of Omicron at least in terms of protecting against severe illness, or the growth in infections hits a wall and starts levelling off sooner than expected then we might still be OK but to all those people simply assuming Omicron is mild, and by that you need to actually be assuming that it is sufficiently milder such that the reduced hospitalisation rate offsets any increase in total number of infections (hospitalising 1% of 200 is the same as hospitalising 2% of 100 - percentages made up for illustrative purposes), I take this as indication that we are still in the process of trying to collect enough data to get an even half-way reliable number to plug into the modelling and there is still significant cause for concern.

- Julian

(*) To very crudely and selectively I pluck out and characterise a headline number.

The charts seem to be simply based on estimates of hospitalization/infection rates, with no attempt made to adjust for existing protection levels in population (either vax or previous infection). If you do a similar comparison for Delta v Alpha in UK, you'd find Delta was much lower. However, this wasn't because Delta was milder, but because our population is much better protected during Delta than when Alpha was dominant (vaccines work!).
If anything, I find it worrying that Omicron rates aren't still lower, because South Africans will have better protection than previously due to more people having vaccines and being infected earlier.
Still looks to me like a big fat 'don't know yet'.

[monabri]

The figures being bandied around yesterday (Sajid Javid) assumed 10,000 people being infected on 8th December with infections doubling every 2.5 days. So, by 8th or 9th of January EVERYONE in the UK will have caught it.



edit: If Omicron is spreading and 40,000 cases predicted by next Monday...won't there be some cases of Delta as well in areas of the UK that the big O has not yet gotten into? So, expect a case load of 80,000 on Monday.

Sometime just before the end of January 2022, EVERYONE in the World will have the new variant. Poor old Delta ..not getting a look in.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... y-overview

[zico]

On the 'scary virus' theme, Ebola is very scary, with mortality date of over 50% but in the last 10 years worldwide there have been around 14,000 deaths - far fewer than Covid,by at least a 2 orders of magnitude.
If Ebola now rocked up on our shores, I can't imagine MPs voting against mask-wearing measures to contain the spread of Ebola.
Yet they feel able to play down the impact of Omicron, which will certainly cost far more lives than an Ebola outbreak.

[Hallucigenia]

Apologies for the Daily Mail link. BBC2 Newsnight just reported the results of this study so I searched for the source and only found 2 links, one (NY Times) behind a paywall and this one so it’s all I have right now.

The original study was done by South Africa's equivalent of BUPA on their members who will obviously have a certain social/economic profile, you can get it with full numbers from here :
https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room

They also have earlier data at https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/h ... f-gp-waves

The risk of hospital admission in the "omicron wave" is reduced by 29% relative to their first wave of D614G but under-18's have a 20% increased risk of hospitalisation when infected (albeit on low numbers, and they're 51% less likely to test positive in the first place - so maybe that's partly a testing problem?).

They found 2 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech give 33% protection against infection and 70% protection against hospitalisation with omicron compared to 80% protection from infection with earlier variants. It drops a little bit more in the elderly.

People infected in the first wave (D614G) have a 73% risk of reinfection
2nd wave (beta) - 60% risk of reinfection
3rd wave (delta) - 40% risk of reinfection

Presumably a fair bit of that is to do with the time elapsed rather than the variant.

[Hallucigenia]

The charts seem to be simply based on estimates of hospitalization/infection rates, with no attempt made to adjust for existing protection levels in population (either vax or previous infection).

From the Discovery press release above :

The risk of hospital admission among adults diagnosed with COVID-19 is 29% lower for the Omicron variant infection compared to infections involving the D614G mutation in South Africa’s first wave in mid-2020, after adjusting for vaccination status

[Hallucigenia]

Don't think I've seen this posted :
https://metro.co.uk/2021/12/14/covid-th ... -15769045/
Symptoms of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant appear to be quite different to what the world already knows.

According to experts in South Africa – where Omicron was first detected – people should look out for five telltale signs.

These slightly differ from the well-known trio of ‘fever, cough and loss of smell’ listed on the NHS website.

Early reports reveal Omicron symptoms are a scratchy throat, a dry cough, extreme tiredness, mild muscle aches and night sweats.

[jfgw]

147K UK deaths associated to covid across two years when 1.2M deaths would have been recorded naturally over the same period is a case of a massive disruption for many for the benefit of relatively few.

The number of deaths is totally irrelevant to the argument. The number of lives saved is an entirely different statistic. We will never know this number.

There are also long-term effects of Covid that some people experience. Again, we will never know what overall effect the restrictions have had.

Furthermore, unless the decision-makers had access to a properly functioning crystal ball, it is not justified to judge actions based upon results. If I offer you an evens bet on whether I throw a six or not a six, and you choose a six and win, you will still have made an unwise decision.


Julian F. G. W.

[servodude]

147K UK deaths associated to covid across two years when 1.2M deaths would have been recorded naturally over the same period is a case of a massive disruption for many for the benefit of relatively few.

The number of deaths is totally irrelevant to the argument. The number of lives saved is an entirely different statistic. We will never know this number.

There are also long-term effects of Covid that some people experience. Again, we will never know what overall effect the restrictions have had.

Furthermore, unless the decision-makers had access to a properly functioning crystal ball, it is not justified to judge actions based upon results. If I offer you an evens bet on whether I throw a six or not a six, and you choose a six and win, you will still have made an unwise decision.


Julian F. G. W.

are we taking turns banging our heads on this brick wall?
- I'm not really feeling up to it today

[zico]

The charts seem to be simply based on estimates of hospitalization/infection rates, with no attempt made to adjust for existing protection levels in population (either vax or previous infection).

From the Discovery press release above :

The risk of hospital admission among adults diagnosed with COVID-19 is 29% lower for the Omicron variant infection compared to infections involving the D614G mutation in South Africa’s first wave in mid-2020, after adjusting for vaccination status

Thanks for that, which makes it better news.

[Mike4]

The number of deaths is totally irrelevant to the argument. The number of lives saved is an entirely different statistic. We will never know this number.

There are also long-term effects of Covid that some people experience. Again, we will never know what overall effect the restrictions have had.

Furthermore, unless the decision-makers had access to a properly functioning crystal ball, it is not justified to judge actions based upon results. If I offer you an evens bet on whether I throw a six or not a six, and you choose a six and win, you will still have made an unwise decision.


Julian F. G. W.

are we taking turns banging our heads on this brick wall?
- I'm not really feeling up to it today

it's the sort of stuff one expects only MPs to come out with when being interviewed on R4, isn't it?

[88V8]

Pardon me if this has been mentioned previously as I haven't kept up... but isn't this the typical evolution of a virus, that it becomes more transmissible but less toxic?
So in a way Omicron is a good thing, as it confirms that Covid is on the evolutionary path to being just a nuisance.

V8

[pje16]

way too early to determine if Omicron is a "good thing"
Wouldn't have used that phrase myself either way

[Hallucigenia]

isn't this the typical evolution of a virus, that it becomes more transmissible but less toxic?

That's one of those myths that virologists are quite keen to stamp out, it ain't necessarily so.

All the virus "cares" about is transmission, disease is irrelevant to it other than how it affects transmission. And in the case of SARS2, transmission is largely over by the time disease starts, so the virus doesn't really care. At the moment it is still "figuring out" how best to transmit. In some cases that will reduce disease, in some cases - as appears to be the case with omicron in children - higher transmission means worse disease. The virus just doesn't care whether disease is worse or not.

[apologies for the anthropomorphism to those for whom it matters...]

[jfgw]

it's the sort of stuff one expects only MPs to come out with when being interviewed on R4, isn't it?

One thing I didn't comment on was the relevance of that 147K figure to anything.

If you tested positive for the first time and got eaten by a crocodile the next day, you are counted;
If you tested positive for the first time, developed symptoms, ended up in hospital and died 29 days later, you are not counted.
If you tested positive a year ago, recovered fully, then more recently got reinfected and died of Covid three weeks after that, you are not counted.

While the shape of the graph may provide useful information, the actual numbers are getting less and less relevant.


Julian F. G. W.

[pje16]

Wow... crocodile deaths
best not go near my village pond
who knew....

[dealtn]

Aaaarggghhh. This is getting so frustrating. Forgive me if I am putting the wrong words in your mouth XFool but it seems pretty clear to me that XFool is not saying that he is “… so sure that Omicron isn't … relatively mild …” he is saying that we do not have enough data yet to make that call. It might be relatively mild compared to Delta or it might not. It that so hard to understand and accept given the inherent delays in disease progression as already pointed out here by numerous people.

Exactly so.

Plus, in the words of Tomas Pueyo:

There’s an additional factor that matters: The Scary Virus Paradox. There’s an interaction between these two: a virus with high transmission rates but low fatality rates might end up killing more people than if the virus has higher fatality rates."

Getting some people to understand this simple and clear point appears as difficult as getting some to understand the significance of "infectious" in the midst of a global pandemic.

The Omicron Question

https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo ... n-question

Getting some people to understand that "might" isn't the same as "must" or "will" appears to be a struggle too.

[XFool]

Getting some people to understand that "might" isn't the same as "must" or "will" appears to be a struggle too.

In my experience, that's as nothing to getting some to understand that posting about "might" be's is not the same thing as posting "must" be or "will" be.

[pje16]

suprised no-one's mentioned another classic boo-boo
I must of and
I must have

[Wizard]

Over 78,000 new cases today, but of those only 4,000 are Omicron. Is there a wider issue than Omicron?