Post #1343: Two calculations showing much lower illness severity for Omicron

 

The title of the article pretty much gives you the entire content.

First, I took data on South African COVID-19 cases and deaths from Johns Hopkins, and calculated a “two week lag” mortality rate.  That is, today’s deaths, divided by new cases from two weeks ago.  That’s my best approximation to the true mortality rate.  Near as I can tell, the case mortality rate for Omicron in South Africa is very small.  So small that I can’t distinguish it from zero given the current state of the data.

In addition, I took what could find regarding hospitalizations for Omicron in South Africa.  Most of what you read about that is highly misleading, because something like three-quarters of Omicron hospitalizations in South Africa are people who were actually being treated for something else.  They just happened to uncover an asymptomatic case of Omicron because everybody admitted to the hospital gets tested.  Adjusting for that, and taking a couple of day’s worth of reported data, best guess, the case hospitalization rate for Omicron, in South Africa, is maybe one-tenth of the rate in the U.S., for Delta.  That is once again my calculation, based on what data I could scrounge up.

And so, a bit of good news for a change.  Best guess, based on the data I can get my hands on, the average Omicron case really is a lot less severe than the average Delta case.

Obviously, I’ll revise these estimates as more information becomes available.

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