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South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

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Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#101

Post by HPsquared »

barbs wrote: post #41
yosito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw some charts out of South Africa today showing that deaths are starting to rise with a three week delay. I'm optimistic that Omicron is less severe, but it's also possible that it's just taking a little longer than expected to start killing people.

Do you have a link for those charts?

https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-a...

Pretty interesting how it clearly shows both "deaths" and "excess deaths".

Here's a good one for Europe:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#102

Post by pvarangot »

cortesoft wrote: post #63
hourislate wrote: post #29

I was at Costco this morning (DFW) buying a big hunk of Prime Rib for Christmas Day dinner. No one either knows or cares anymore. I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes but I'm starting to feel weird considering no one else is wearing a mask anymore, not even the folks who look like they got one foot in the grave already. Omicron is already so yesterday it isn't even a memory.

Where are you? Everyone where I am in Southern California still wears a mask inside.

I'm in San Francisco and it depends on the event. For example:

  - Infected Mushroom in the Midway: hardly anyone wearing masks, irregardless of if they are drinking or not

  - Chvrches in the Civic Auditorium: most people wearing masks, maybe 20% of the audience unmasked. Even people with drinks mostly just removing it drinking and putting it back on.

  - Spiderman in the AMC Kabuki: mostly everyone wearing masks

  - Karaoke bar in Japantown after Spiderman: no one wearing masks, not even the barman and the owner of the bar that were of course not drinking

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#103

Post by ls612 »

cdrini wrote: post #64
nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

That chart is misleading; the rise/spike in deaths is always delayed from the rise/spike in cases. It does seem like Omicron is less deadly than Delta. The big concern is that because it's so significantly more contagious, that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to overwhelm hospitals. Sources: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Larry Brilliant (W…

It is delayed, but not by a month. Remember the spike began around Thanksgiving, and it's almost Christmas now.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#104

Post by aantix »

cwkoss wrote: post #66
hourislate wrote: post #29

I was at Costco this morning (DFW) buying a big hunk of Prime Rib for Christmas Day dinner. No one either knows or cares anymore. I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes but I'm starting to feel weird considering no one else is wearing a mask anymore, not even the folks who look like they got one foot in the grave already. Omicron is already so yesterday it isn't even a memory.

Even leaving aside covid concerns, I'd love for sanitizer stations and mask wearing in grocery stores to become the new normal. I don't want the general public sneezing on my food - especially during flu season.

If I have to choose a time to stop masking, between now and my death, I'm not going to choose my death.

I will stop wearing one much sooner. I hate the muffled voices. I can't see anyone smile. It's dehumanizing.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#105

Post by toolz »

volkse wrote: post #42
nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

It has been discussed many times before - the issue with the SA data is that 80% of the population have been exposed to the virus (either had it or have been vaccinated) so the deaths not budging there can be very misleading for countries with lower vaccination rates.

South Africa is well under average vaccination rate globally. Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the virus? Of course they've been exposed to the virus, that's exactly why it's interesting to see how their deaths follow cases.

There's no indication that the first world, with much higher vaccination rates won't fare better than South Africa, which seems to be faring exceptionally well relative to other case spikes.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#106

Post by hourislate »

cortesoft wrote: post #63
hourislate wrote: post #29

I was at Costco this morning (DFW) buying a big hunk of Prime Rib for Christmas Day dinner. No one either knows or cares anymore. I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes but I'm starting to feel weird considering no one else is wearing a mask anymore, not even the folks who look like they got one foot in the grave already. Omicron is already so yesterday it isn't even a memory.

Where are you? Everyone where I am in Southern California still wears a mask inside.

I'm in DFW

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#107

Post by herodoturtle »

nostromo wrote: post #40
fiter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since deaths lag cases, have you seen a graph that has peaks labeled on the time axis?

I added the original source so you can explore in more detail. You can see that in previous spikes there was a short delay, but in general they rose in tandem. All evidence points to Omicron as far less lethal than Delta.

Thanks for your assorted useful comments and links.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#108

Post by nostromo »

cdrini wrote: post #64
nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

That chart is misleading; the rise/spike in deaths is always delayed from the rise/spike in cases. It does seem like Omicron is less deadly than Delta. The big concern is that because it's so significantly more contagious, that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to overwhelm hospitals. Sources: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Larry Brilliant (W…

I'm glad it's more contagious than Delta, because Delta is much worse than Omicron.

Sure, I'd rather we didn't have Covid at all, but that's not been a realistic option for quite some time now.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#109

Post by xjrk »

woodruffw wrote: post #46
nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

I am cautiously optimistic about the severity of Omicron. But as others have pointed out before: deaths trail infections by 2-4 weeks. Omicron was first reported to the WHO on 11/24 and wasn't categorized as a variant of concern until 11/26. It hasn't even been a month since it was acknowledged much less has become the dominant variant in most places.

Increase in Gauteng (South Africa) has started already well before 11/24. Even if deaths trail infections by 2-4 weeks we would have already seen nice steeply increasing slope. Another point is that anecdotally hospitalizations in SA were shorter and often people tested positive after being admitted because of something else than COVID.
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