Thought of the Day - December 9 2021 - All We'll Get By Xmas is Omicron

Looking at the Government of Canada's variant web page, one can see that Omicron was added as a variant of concern on November 28th. This is way more proactive than the long delays in taking note of Delta back in the spring ( Thought of the Day - June 20 2021 - By the Numbers ). Unfortunately, as Canada's Info-Health publishes their variant breakdown three weeks in arrears, they have yet to report any Omicron.

Despite the flight bans from southern African countries Omicron is here and is coming with a vengeance. Turning to OurWorldInData we see the following. In less than two weeks, Omicron has gone from undetected at the end of November to 3% of new cases here in Canada.

Omicron will be our dominant variant by the end of the year, adding momentum to the country's next wave that is just getting started.

As we covered about ten days ago ( Thought of the Day - November 29 2021 - Is the New Variant Great News? ) things are still looking good concerning Omicron's lethality. Indeed, headlines such as "growing number of cases in hospital in SA are Omicron" are a bit misleading. It turns out what is really being said is that when people are in hospital for all kinds of reasons and are given a COVID test as a matter of course, those that are COVID positive have the Omicron strain. Meaning, Omicron is now the dominant strain in South Africa, not that people have been going into hospital because of it. I have yet to find a single record of anyone dying solely due to Omicron-driven symptoms.

The challenge over the next month will be the very high number of cases expected from a much more transmissible variant. Even if symptoms do turn out to be mild for most, there will still be a percentage that need medical support. These will be people, vaccinated or not, who have pre-existing medical issues and just can't handle an additional viral burden. It also means as we are in winter and have done little to improve ventilation in our institutions, Omicron will soon be rattling through our care homes and hospitals.

In short, as this is a numbers game, it will probably still mean in the coming months hospitals will get busy and some people will die. That said, this is still looking like good news for the public in general, it may just be the stepping stone we need to put this pandemic behind us.

Cheers

Cliff