Thought of the Day - January 9 2022 - By the Numbers

Even though world cases increased by another 50% over the past week, new death levels are still fairly flat. Sorry to say, deaths are still creeping up a little in South Africa in the aftermath of last month's wave. The same is now true of western Europe. That said, given the number of cases things are still looking reasonable.

From a data point of view, I guess you can say the world is now divided into those that can afford to increase their testing levels and those that figure it is better to focus scant resources on saving the lives of the symptomatic rather than doing more testing of the masses.

This chart kinda sums Canada's current preoccupation - next week, as we shoot past 50,000 new official daily cases, NYT is going to need a new scale. What this really means is that essential services are now going to have a harder and harder time with staffing, as we still have quite a way to go.

Here in Canada, both hospitalization and death figures were up over the past week.

Here is the best information we have concerning Omicron's share of cases in Canada.

If you extrapolate, it probably means that Omicron became the dominant strain in Canada this past week. This does mean, however, that the majority of our cases up until this point are still Delta:

1. Therefore the increasing deaths in Canada, mentioned above, are also still from Delta (as the Ontario study data from late last month pointed there were seven Delta deaths and none from Omicron).

2. We still have a way to go before Omicron truly takes over. It will be several more weeks before we have local data concerning Omicron's potential effect on hospitalization, and another couple of weeks after that concerning Canada's Omicron case fatality rates.

3. As we are several weeks behind western Europe, our Omicron cases are unlikely to peak until February, and it will be late February before COVID in Canada starts to subside.

This week there is again no shout-out. While Saskatchewan, as predicted, is doing the best in Canada, indeed the best in Canada and the US, their cases are also now on the rise.

Cheers

Cliff