i didnt’ say it woudl predict ours exactly- I said that we are still averaging around 2000 deaths a day in the US, and it’s claimed that omicron is now and has been from awhile now, the dominant variant, making up over 99% of the cases of covid now- Omicron, being mild overall- isn’t causing deaths in other nations in the 1000’s- and they are having very few omicron deaths, but mysteriously, here in America, it looks like we are having 100’s per day? What’s up with that? Something isn’t jiving with the numbers when it comes to omicron and deaths-
Maybe all the deaths are left over covid 19 cases- i dunno- but if omicron is taking over- then we should see dramatic decreases in deaths very very soon- as covid 19 and delta becomes nearly extinct in the us, especially where regrettably mostly the elderly have died- killing off a great many of the elderly- leaving more healthy people in the nation, with most people now having natural immunity which will render the omicron even less a problem than it already is- -
meant to say ‘mysteriously, we are experiencing 1000’s still per day’
Probably I should have said “likely would not predict ours well at all.”
I note that SA’s resolved cases CFR is over 2.7% AFTER Omicron (assuming Omicron is pretty well done there.) I can only estimate at best what that number was just B4 Omicron. 3.5%, maybe? That would lead toward the possibility that maybe Delta took out nearly all the fatally vulnerable (and likely to be exposed) people in SA before Omicron even popped up.
Something that is unrecognized is that we DO have a lot of people in the US in long term recovery from prior variants, and sometimes those recoveries regress. One of my wife’s best friends was readmitted to the hospital for COVID complications twice after going home: One of those readmissions was pretty serious. It took the friend a year before she could go outside in cold weather (Mid-South cold weather, not northern US cold weather). Obviously, with that kind of damage, things can go wrong...
That said, I don’t think that accounts for 2k+ fatalities a day. It’s probably significant, though. And I also note another oddity in SA’s numbers vs. ours: They show few unresolved cases. We have 30 million!
Something else, too: Even with increased likely underreporting of our Omicron cases, our Omicron case spike (area under curve including likely future cases) dwarfs our Delta case spike. SA’s Delta case curve area clearly beats out their Omicron curve. So... While Omicron’s raw infectiousness is much higher than Delta, in total, in SA, Omicron’s effective infectiousness over the course of the wave was LOWER than their Delta wave. This has a whole host of ramifications.
Then there is the issue of the younger, slimmer population remaining after Delta, and perhaps better natural resistance in it, even discounting the demographics, before any of this started.
I can go on. ;-)
Hmmm... Perhaps I should have said “SA’s overall experience in many ways is not predictive of ours.”
France, however, is quite interesting, in a tragic way. They are consistently running MORE fatalities from Omicron than Delta. Over double, now. :-(
I suggest a “relook”. Not that making that suggestion gives me any pleasure. :-(