Omicron variant caught a cold

[Justin Passing]

Yup, all the search results I find quote (or misquote) Boris. WITH not OF omicron.
South Africa still say no deaths OF it : https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1536157/south-africa-official-deaths-variant-omicron-covid

I'm no diseaseologist, but for delta, the average, most common case may be a few days ill, while some don't feel it at all and some die.
I know it varies by age etc etc but there must be some sort of distribution.
Let's assume it's a normal distribution.
Your stiffs are going to be up at the top end of illness. They're of the order of 1% at some some age so that's about 2.5 standard deviations from the mean, and higher. Black.
You can argue about the numbers...
The area under the curve represents the number in that illness group.

Now let's say omicron is two thirds as "dangerous" as delta. It must be some sort of function. A simple multiple may not be right but it's not utterly wrong.
If you have a better one, please show it.
So I've got the average/peak number, about two thirds across the graph, for omicron.

The vertical axis is the proportion for each variant. (I should have removed the numbers). That's why the heights are the same. If it was the number for each variant, then blue would, we're told, be many times higher.
But look at the blue curve, you have a very small number of people that far away from the blue average, far enough along the pathogenicity axis to die. There are tables to look the proportions up; 3SDs is something like 0.15%, and so on.
The shape of the curve won't be correct, it would be flatter and the two curves would overlap, but you can see how a one-third-less severe disease can have much less than one third fewer people getting to the same illness/dying.

If you don't like it, draw your own curves, but the effect will be there.
I don't mind being wrong - tell me, as long as you're civil about it!

 

[JohnD]

Now let's say omicron is two thirds as "dangerous" as delta.

Now let's say it is two or three times as infectious.

Up go the deaths.

 

[Justin Passing]

I've been scouting around looking for stats curves on covid severity. Roughly comparable, but it does seem the deaths are a bit random - more mild-looking cases drop dead that you might expect.

On Vitamin D, I thought this was interesting, since I have a paper saying mine level is very low,,,

 

[JohnD]

Well bless my soul! What's this I've found?

"How did the UK reach 200,000 Omicron infections in one day?
Scientists warn rates of the coronavirus variant will continue to rise ‘like a rocket’

https://www.ft.com/content/d69a0a68-d5ac-4ac3-98ac-1bbceec513b6

Health secretary Sajid Javid sent shockwaves through parliament on Monday when he revealed that an estimated 200,000 people in the UK had been infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant that day.

If Omicron infections continue to double every 2.5 days, as current estimates suggest, there will be a million people infected this coming Sunday alone.

Why are Omicron infection estimates so much higher than confirmed cases? On Monday, when the UK Health Security Agency estimated around 200,000 new Omicron infections occurred, there were 59,610 confirmed cases of Covid-19, of which around 37,000 are estimated to have been Omicron. The daily caseload was the fifth highest recorded during the pandemic.

Yet the 200,000 figure, which is based on modelling by UKHSA, could be an underestimate, according to to health officials. “It’s ripping up like a rocket . . . close to everyone is going to get it,” said Carl Pearson, a research fellow in mathematical modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Deaths will follow after a couple of weeks.

 

[Justin Passing]

Now let's say it is two or three times as infectious.

Up go the deaths.

That's too simplistic. The shifting left of the whole blue curve , as drawn, shows that you could have several times the number and still, insignificant deaths, because the proportion is so small. If it's 5 times as infectious, at 4SDs away the graph goes down to practically zero ; 5 x 0 = approximately 0.

The FT has its sums wrong. To go from 1 to 200,000 is 17.6 doublings, so it's doubling approx every day since it arrived. It'll be at 50,000,000 in 8 days at that rate.
Good, no point locking down, then .

 

[JohnD]

practically zero ; 5 x 0 = approximately 0.

"Practically" zero

But 5 x 1 =5

And 5 x 1,000 = 5,000

 

[Justin Passing]

Well bless my soul! What's this I've found?

"How did the UK reach 200,000 Omicron infections in one day?
Scientists warn rates of the coronavirus variant will continue to rise ‘like a rocket’

https://www.ft.com/content/d69a0a68-d5ac-4ac3-98ac-1bbceec513b6

Health secretary Sajid Javid sent shockwaves through parliament on Monday when he revealed that an estimated 200,000 people in the UK had been infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant that day.

If Omicron infections continue to double every 2.5 days, as current estimates suggest, there will be a million people infected this coming Sunday alone.

Why are Omicron infection estimates so much higher than confirmed cases? On Monday, when the UK Health Security Agency estimated around 200,000 new Omicron infections occurred, there were 59,610 confirmed cases of Covid-19, of which around 37,000 are estimated to have been Omicron. The daily caseload was the fifth highest recorded during the pandemic.

Yet the 200,000 figure, which is based on modelling by UKHSA, could be an underestimate, according to to health officials. “It’s ripping up like a rocket . . . close to everyone is going to get it,” said Carl Pearson, a research fellow in mathematical modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Deaths will follow after a couple of weeks.

Sure, most of us may get it eventually. Several days ago I suggested how we might get to 300,000 deaths quite easliy, from 32,000,000 cases.
Whatever the multiple is, SA still reports NO deaths. If we have 200,000, they must ALL have it by now. By that measure we might not get any either.

 

[JohnD]

If you sincerely believe that the death rate is 0%, I suppose we can afford to give all our hospital staff a month off.

 

[Justin Passing]

"Practically" zero

But 5 x 1 =5

And 5 x 1,000 = 5,000

The number OF it remains, reportedly, at 0. It's been around out in SA for long enough to notice some, don't you think?
They don't have 1000. You made that up.
5000 out of the entire population would be "practically zero".

 

[Justin Passing]

If you sincerely believe that the death rate is 0%, I suppose we can afford to give all our hospital staff a month off.

We know you like to be the forum #1 troll John but I didn't say that. Are you going to say next that one death is highly significant if it's your kid??

Deaths might follow, but the fact remains that it's looking like numbers won't be high. I had a go at suggesting why.
What I posted may be invalid, but do you have anything to say which is worth saying?

 

[Deleted member 292770]

let's say omicron is two thirds as "dangerous" as delta.

Lets not. In fact lets stop supposing all sorts of nonsense . For once i’m inclined to go with the ‘facts’ . It may well be two thirds more transmittable but CLEARLY nowhere near as dangerous. That’s absolutely fantastic news right? Best news we’ve had for two years . Or so you’d think. I notice the gov selectsperts have disappeared on this one and the hysteria is still focussing on stamping out the thing that will leave us with what may even be less potent than the flu we started with .

 

[Deleted member 292770]

We know you like to be the forum #1 troll John but I didn't say that. Are you going to say next that one death is highly significant if it's your kid??

Deaths might follow, but the fact remains that it's looking like numbers won't be high. I had a go at suggesting why.
What I posted may be invalid, but do you have anything to say which is worth saying?

Best thing you can do is completely disregard everything jonn troll has to say. It’s clearly the most wrapped in cotton wool human on the planet. A few deaths from Omicron in a hundred thousand patients is the end of the world to cottonjohn . However several hundreds of deaths from an unnecessary vaccine is fine. If it’s not backed up by a link from a hand picked expert John freaks out and goes straight into troll mode as he/she a total inability to think for him/her self and can’t understand anyone who can.

 

[Deleted member 292770]

Now let's say it is two or three times as infectious.

Up go the deaths.

Lets just make stuff up when it suits us.. priceless.
NO deaths here.

 

[Justin Passing]

Lets not. In fact lets stop supposing all sorts of nonsense . For once i’m inclined to go with the ‘facts’ . It may well be two thirds more transmittable but CLEARLY nowhere near as dangerous. That’s absolutely fantastic news right? Best news we’ve had for two years . Or so you’d think. I notice the selectsperts have disappeared on this one and the hysteria is still focussing on stamping out the thing that will leave us with what may even be less potent than the flu we started with .

Somehow I don't think it'll be that simple, either. There's a history with covid of people with axes to grind giving fake infirmation. If the SA Borises suddenly discover they have no motive to pretend they don't have a problem and yes, there are a few thousand deaths from o, it'll look very different.

 

[denso13]

has been asked to scrutinise the UK government's response to the new strain by Westminster's science and technology committee.

Good, science evolves, let's keep learning. Is she investigating governments worldwide or just the UK?