Agreed, so what we're measuring is a lower bound, but as long as the ratio between the two stays roughly constant we can also still measure the relative growth rate.
Why do you expect the ratio to stay roughly constant? Just base rate of creation of variants that have higher transmissibility, or also something specific to this situation that I'm missing?
Is there a reason for not including an IFR or some sort of mortality prediction? These other questions around transmissibility, immune escape, and policy are interesting but it feels like a lot of folks are sidestepping what would seem to be the most important question.
My aim is to cover this under less/more virulent, and the IFR is something we may never know for sure (unless we basically assume everyone got it) as opposed to CFR and it will vary a lot by region based on immune levels and health/age. I've said I expect a much lower IFR/CFR due to a lot more reinfections/breakthroughs.
Given the level of immune escape, is there any reason to believe that, in countries where Delta is currently dominant, Omicron can substantially reduce the current spread of Delta, or will it just augment the already-high case rates and become the dominant strain in percentage terms? Presumably people can't be co-infected with both strains at the same time, but otherwise is there reason to believe that there's enough short-term protection from one type of infection to substantially reduce the probability of the other? This seems relevant to answering the question of whether the hospitals are likely to get overwhelmed this winter in countries like the UK and US.
Control system will react to Omicron, which will in turn push down Delta, and Omicron does grant partial immunity to Delta unless something is very weird.
How long do we expect the Omicron crisis to last? If it's doubling every 2.5 days it'll run out of British people to infect by the 8th of January so things will have to have slowed down by then.
Does Omicron seem to progress slower or faster than Covid Classic? You need this figure if you want to turn growth rates into naive herd immunity figures
That's the thing. Three times we have expected things to go that way, three times it mostly hasn't. I don't see what response prevents it this time, but fool me three times?
Do you think it's likely that, in case Omicron is mild (& _very_ infectious) - it'll mutate into sth not mild? After all, lots of cases = lots of chances of such mutation.
SGTF might stop being a good proxy for Omicron, because we now have a subvariant of Omicron that doesn't manifest it.
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/361 says:
> The new sub-lineage (putative BA.2) does not carry the spike:69/70del deletion and will thus not be detectable by SGTF (S-gene target failure).
Agreed, so what we're measuring is a lower bound, but as long as the ratio between the two stays roughly constant we can also still measure the relative growth rate.
Why do you expect the ratio to stay roughly constant? Just base rate of creation of variants that have higher transmissibility, or also something specific to this situation that I'm missing?
In the next few weeks new variants shouldn't much matter.
Is there a reason for not including an IFR or some sort of mortality prediction? These other questions around transmissibility, immune escape, and policy are interesting but it feels like a lot of folks are sidestepping what would seem to be the most important question.
My aim is to cover this under less/more virulent, and the IFR is something we may never know for sure (unless we basically assume everyone got it) as opposed to CFR and it will vary a lot by region based on immune levels and health/age. I've said I expect a much lower IFR/CFR due to a lot more reinfections/breakthroughs.
Re Israel - it was already letting in citizens, so I don't think the parents and grandparents thing makes much of a difference.
Given the level of immune escape, is there any reason to believe that, in countries where Delta is currently dominant, Omicron can substantially reduce the current spread of Delta, or will it just augment the already-high case rates and become the dominant strain in percentage terms? Presumably people can't be co-infected with both strains at the same time, but otherwise is there reason to believe that there's enough short-term protection from one type of infection to substantially reduce the probability of the other? This seems relevant to answering the question of whether the hospitals are likely to get overwhelmed this winter in countries like the UK and US.
Control system will react to Omicron, which will in turn push down Delta, and Omicron does grant partial immunity to Delta unless something is very weird.
How long do we expect the Omicron crisis to last? If it's doubling every 2.5 days it'll run out of British people to infect by the 8th of January so things will have to have slowed down by then.
Does Omicron seem to progress slower or faster than Covid Classic? You need this figure if you want to turn growth rates into naive herd immunity figures
That's the thing. Three times we have expected things to go that way, three times it mostly hasn't. I don't see what response prevents it this time, but fool me three times?
Do you think it's likely that, in case Omicron is mild (& _very_ infectious) - it'll mutate into sth not mild? After all, lots of cases = lots of chances of such mutation.
Possible but it being mild makes it a lot less likely.