Thought of the Day - January 2 2022 - By the Numbers

Cases, cases, cases. Around the world reported case rates are going up markedly (over 50% in the last week) - well except in Africa and Asia (a topic for another day).

World deaths have been slowly declining, but this may change soon as Europe is again seeing an uptick.

Looking at patients in hospital (something that OurWorld in Data is unable to get from Canada as of late), we see that despite the huge wave in South Africa, hospitalizations are now declining. That said, hospitalizations are increasing in the UK and also dramatically in the USA. Through the end of their last wave and the start of the new, deaths in the US have remained stubbornly high.

South Africa's death rates doubled during the Omicron wave, however, case rates during this period went up by a factor of ten, thus reinforcing that the new variant, as guestimates, is four times less deadly.

Last week a widely-reported study from Ontario suggested Omicron was 54% less likely to cause hospitalization or death, but this was total crap. I managed to get my hands on the data from the report. It records there were 7 deaths from Delta and 0 from Omicron. The conclusion should have been that with Omicron you are 100% less likely to die than with Delta, but instead, the press just added apples and oranges and made a meaningless fruit comparison!

As we are in the holiday period, are rapidly reaching testing capacity limits, and are changing test policy on the fly, there is really no reason to look into cases in any detail in Canada. All we need to know is they are by far the highest we have ever seen. Thus the hospitalization and ICU rates are the key indicators as to what is the implication.

Over the past week hospitalizations are up almost 60% and for the first time deaths are just starting to creep up.

Government data concerning variants is still well behind what is talked about with the press. Canada, like many countries, has been using the phrase "the majority of new cases are Omicron" for more than a week now, yet Canada is only officially reporting 40% of cases are Omicron.

What this does mean, however, is many of those currently in hospital in Canada, and subsequently dying, had Delta from the start of our fifth wave. By the end of next week, we will start to see what the massive Omicron wave really means concerning severe symptoms here in Canada.

Two weeks ago we gave a shout-out to Saskatchewan, as it looked like they were going in the right direction. As of today, they have the lowest reported new case rate in Canada, and only just beaten out by Montana as the best in Canada and the US case-wise. That said, I am sure the Omicron wave will catch up to them in the next week.

So here we are. This week there are no shout-outs. We all know case rates are up and testing is maxed out, but things are still looking good concerning the severity of symptoms from Omicron.

Cheers

Cliff