Happy holidays! Signed, Omicron

In the good old days (a little more than a year ago), a new variant took months to gain a hold in the US, when it first appeared in another part of the world. The British variant (that’s another relic of the good old days – you could associate a variant with a country, even though that was somewhat unfair to the country involved. What’s with Greek letters, anyway?) appeared in the early fall of 2020 and took at least 2-3 months to become the leading variant in the UK – and at the same time drove a big new wave of infections and deaths, since of course nobody was vaccinated then. It was I believe March of this year before that variant became dominant in the US, although by then vaccinations kept it from spreading anywhere near as rapidly as it did in the UK.

Then the delta variant appeared in India last spring, with absolutely devastating results in deaths (and there isn’t much doubt that India, not the US, has had the highest number of Covid deaths of any country, even though officially we’re number 1). But it was the late summer before delta became the dominant variant here, and its spread was somewhat limited by the fact that a good portion of the population was vaccinated by that time (the US had 4,000 deaths a day on a few days in January, and that was the old, original Covid – nothing like the genuine article! Meanwhile, the highest daily death rate - based on a 7-day average - under Delta was 2,300 in September).

Omicron appeared in South Africa about a month ago, and it’s already the dominant variant there. What about in the UK? The health minister announced on Monday that it would become dominant in London within 48 hours, so it should be dominant there (and perhaps the rest of the UK, although there isn’t as much sequencing capacity there, so it might not be detected as quickly) already.

How long will omicron take to become dominant in the US? The CDC said two days ago that this could happen in January, or perhaps a month or two later. But it will happen, and it obviously spreads much more rapidly than delta (but don’t worry, there’s still plenty of delta to go around, thank you. You’ll notice that new cases are rising again, as are deaths. Those are all due to delta. And the inevitable holiday spread will mostly be delta).

Omicron does seem to have a greater ability to infect vaccinated people, so now the CDC is trying to re-orient its messaging to say that vaccination won’t completely prevent infection, but it will definitely make it much more likely that an infected person will be hospitalized or die. However, one caveat is that everyone needs to get their booster shot ASAP, if you haven’t had it yet.

And of course, people who aren’t vaccinated should get vaccinated immediately. Unless, of course, you belong to a death cult that qualifies you for a religious exemption (although I don’t believe political parties count as religions. But some political groups and media outlets can certainly count as death cults, based on their rhetoric against vaccines - essentially, anything that's proven to keep a lot of people alive). In that case, far be it from me to infringe on your liberty to suffer a lonely death in a hospital, if you believe God is telling you to do that!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, December 12.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during period	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April	24,323	811	64%
Month of May	19,843	661	82%
Month of June	10,544	351	53%
Month of July	8,833	287	84%
Month of August	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept.	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct.	49,992	1,613	88%
Month of Nov.	38,364	1,279	77%
Total Pandemic so far	819,258	1,270

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 819,258

Average daily deaths last seven days: 1,358

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 1,167

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 50,933,596

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 862,775 (123,254/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 740,691 (105,813/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 1.7%  

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.