However, the health consequences of Omicron are, so far, minimal in comparison. While cases have risen 202% over the last two weeks, hospitalizations are up an alarming but comparatively moderate 30%. That is a 172 point difference. There is a lag between infection and hospitalization but cases began their rise, and have kept rising uninterruptedly since Dec. 14. Then there were "only" 118,141 per day on average. That's 826,987 for the week Dec. 8-14, 1.735M fewer than then current week. Dec. 14th's beginning of O's rise is 19 days to and including Jan. 1, going on three weeks. You read different hospitalization intervals. My initial gold standard was 1-2 weeks and then 1-2 for the death interval but recently I read that between + test and hospitalization is 3-4 week and then one to two weeks for the death interval. Perhaps the scientists, or all the scientists, are simply pulling those estimates out of their scientific assholes. but, to repeat, we are 19 days in, close to three weeks. The vast majority of cases from Dec. 8-14 should have resulted in H's rise if they were ever to, and indeed the H-number has risen dramatically (I consider a 30% rise "dramatic") but so far beneath that of cases that there is something more going on and that something is that scientists from around the world now are getting some good data that Omicron is the Edsel of coronavirus mutations in that it spares the lungs. We homos use those things to like breathe so they're important. In a word, the data is crystallizing that Omicron is far more contagious but leads to much less serious illness.
This is further borne out in the death numbers, which are down 4% in the last week. It is certainly too early for all of those cases and all of those hospitalizations to resolve, if they do, in death, but deaths have been consistently in negative territory for several days. A picture is worth a 1,000 words so we will conclude this post with the three pictures of the graphs for each category:
This is cases with the Delta peak for comparison.
Hospitalizations with the original coronavirus still-record peak and the Delta peak. 'Bout an 85-degree up-slope there under Omicron. Reasonable to think, given the lag, that they will top Delta's peak, but I, at least, very much doubt they will ever approach or exceed the late Jan. 2021 peak. The steepness of that Omicron rise is definitely sickening (no pun intended) to see.
Deaths are still just beginning to move through the statistical system but it needs to be acknowledged nonetheless that from the week ending Dec. 22 to that ending Dec. 29, the drop has been consistent and not to be gainsaid, only viewed cautiously.
From the week ending Dec. 29 to that ending Jan. 1 (including the weeks Dec. 24-30 and Dec. 25-31 deaths have risen an average of 37/day.
In sum, O is wreaking havoc on business profits, on the workplace, on the schoolhouse and is beginning to fill the hospitals but the cemeteries and crematoria are, mercifully, and for now, nowhere near capacity.
