I sent my issue and my baby's mamma the excerpted article on the CDC "revision" (4:03 pm post),
Last week, the C.D.C. said that Omicron accounted for approximately 73 percent of variants circulating in the United States in the week ending Dec. 18. But in its revision, the agency said the variant accounted for about 23 percent of cases that week.
In other words, Delta, which has dominated U.S. infections since summer, still reigned in the United States that week.
Oh. That's not good.
That could mean that a significant number of current Covid hospitalizations were driven by infections from Delta, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, suggested on Twitter. Hospitalizations typically lag several weeks behind initial infections.
Experts said they were not surprised by the revisions...they said the C.D.C. did a poor job communicating the uncertainty of its estimates.
Oh, so we still suck.
...
“The 73 percent got a lot more attention than the confidence intervals, and I think this is one example among many where scientists are trying to project an air of confidence about what’s going to happen,” said David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
...
More precise numbers will be needed to smartly distribute Covid treatments.
...And the NYT graphs from 12:48:
My son responded:
I call BS. It’s clear that cases have increased but that percentage of hospitalizations and/or deaths is way down. Indicating that Omicron is the reigning strain. If we saw the same ratio of cases to hospitalizations/deaths that we saw during peak delta than I’d agree. But no, all data I’ve seen shows a more infectious and less severe version of Covid aka omicron and not delta. Then again, wtf do I know.
Son, that was sooo reasoned and rational! *clap* 👏🏻 *clap* VERY good points! CDC can’t count and YOU are being modest?😂
I think he's right. The cases number has far exceeded Delta's high but the H-number plateaued a bit in the last couple of iterations and is nowhere near as high as H's at peak-Delta. And the D-number has fallen in the last few iterations--after a plateauing. I wrote back to my son that the humongous caseload is not baked into the H and D numbers yet but reiterated what I have written here a couple of times, that there is just no way--nor are they expected--that H's and D's will rise to peak-Delta levels. And I wrote to him that CDC had lots of critics when it came out with that 73% O figure, and now it will have more. 23% does not represent a "revision," it is, as NYT appropriately termed it, a "slash." More, it is CDC's admission that it can't count. All to say, and I do not think anyone other than my son has said it, CDC's numbers are "BS"; taken together the three graphs do not look like Delta. They look like something new, Omicron.
