This will be my last post of 2021. I'm writing now only because it feels important to give everyone a heads up on what's coming, so you can take appropriate measures to protect yourself. With that in mind, here's a short primer on the math of Omicron.
I have to expect that the peoples of South Africa, Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have all actively reduced their levels of social contact in recent weeks to avoid being infected with Omicron. We're still seeing cases doubling every three days in those jurisdictions despite whatever risk-reduction measures individuals or governments have put in place. For that reason, I think we should assume a three-day doubling time in North America despite whatever individual or collective measures we put in place to try to slow the spread of Omicron.
In the week ending December 20th, daily COVID cases in the US, Canada, and BC doubled after being relatively flat for several weeks. I think it's a good assumption that half of whatever cases were reported on December 20th were Omicron, as there was no reason for Delta cases to suddenly explode after weeks of stability.
The people who tested positive on December 20th, most likely became infected on or about the 13th of December. Based on the three-day doubling time we have seen in other jurisdictions, 18 days after the 13th of December, we should see 64 times as many infections with Omicron. If Delta cases remain relatively flat, there will be 64 times as many infections of Omicron as Delta by New Years Eve. In other words, we can expect that by New Year's Eve that more than 98 percent of new infections will be Omicron.
If cases continue to double every three days, thirty days after the 13th of December - on January 12th - we will see 1,000 times as many infections as occurred on the 13th of December. If half of the 10,000 cases of COVID diagnosed in Canada on December 20th were Omicron infections that occurred on the 13th of December, that 5,000 infections will have exploded to 5 million Omicron infections taking place on the 12th of January.
Here's your first rule of thumb for Omicron math: Whatever the daily infection numbers are for Omicron, multiplying that number by five will give you a ballpark estimate of total number of Omicron infections that have occurred by that date. Using that rule of thumb we can expect a total of 25 million Omicron infections will have taken place in Canada by the twelfth of January.
Here's your second rule of thumb for Omicron math: Three day doubling means infections grow by 26 percent per day, compounding daily. So if 5 million infections occur on January 12th, 6.3 million infections will occur on January 13th, and 7.9 million infections will occur on the 14th of January. Using our five times rule of thumb, that translates to 39.5 million total infections, or the entire population of Canada by the middle of January.
It won't happen quite that fast. Partly it's that the spread is going to be uneven. Some pockets of the country will experience the Omicron surge a couple of weeks later than the rest of the country. We should also expect the rate of infection to will slow down in later weeks as more and more of the population has developed an immunity to Omicron.
With those caveats, I think it likely that almost everyone in North America will have been exposed to Omicron by the end of January, even if it takes a couple of weeks after that date to show up in official data tracking.
So far, the data suggests that though vaccination will reduce a person's risk of hospitalization or death, it doesn't usually prevent infection with Omicron. Some people are getting infected with Omicron even after having had booster shots.
It's still looking like Omicron is much milder than Delta, which should limit the death toll. Chris Martenson at Peak Prosperity has a great new video going through in detail the current information we have about Omicron. Here are his conclusions:
Even if it turns out Omicron is no milder than Delta, the immune response created by vaccination and/or previous natural immunity should greatly reduce the death rate from Omicron compared to previous variants. Yes, the sheer number of infections means that we can suspect hospitals may be overwhelmed at some point, and that could push up the death rate somewhat. That being said, the great majority of those who survive COVID do so without ever going to hospital.
The bottom line on all this is that it is extremely likely that you will be exposed to Omicron some time during the next six weeks. The next six weeks is therefore going to be a crucial time to take very good care of yourself. Exercise. Take your vitamins. Get lots of sleep. Rein in your intake of sugar and alcohol. Do whatever works best for you to keep yourself calm and centred. Encourage everyone you care about to do the same.
The good news is that it is looking more and more like Omicron will put a use-by date on this seemingly endless pandemic. My strong suspicion is that by February almost everyone will have developed a level of natural immunity to the coronavirus family of viruses, and that cases will drop away to almost nothing soon after that.
There are no guarantees. Yet another new variant could mess up that rosy scenario. But, at this point, I think it's more likely than not that February 2022 will prove to be the beginning of the post-pandemic era. Maybe that will prove to be the gift that Omicron brings us at Christmas.
Let's hope so.
Wishing everyone a peaceful and merry Christmas.
Bruce
PS: Here's how daily and total infections play out on a spreadsheet at a 26% compounded growth rate in real time for Canada, BC, Vancouver Island and the U.S. You can see daily and total cases doubling every three days. (Not perfectly, but close enough!) Diagnosed case numbers can be expected to follow about a week later than dates shown:
London, England, will give us a good preview on what’s coming.
If 5% of Londoners were testing positive for Omicron on December 24th, I think we can assume that that 5% became infected on or before December 20th. With a three-day doubling, 100% will be infected 13 days later on January 2nd, although testing won't show that result until January 8th or 9th.
London can be our canary in the coalmine for how many hospitalizations and deaths can be expected from Omicron. The caveat on that is that we can suspect that levels of natural immunity are much higher in the UK can they are in Canada, so they might get off much lighter than we do.
Despite what Bonnie Henry erroneously reports, previous COVID infection does significantly reduce a person’s odds of catching Omicron, going to hospital or dying.
A South African study found that previous COVID infection reduced the risks for reinfection with Omicron by only one-third as much as it reduces the risk of re-infection with any previous variant. That sounds really bad until you dig below the headline.
That same document reports that there were only 35,670 suspected reinfections with previous variants among 2,796,982 COVID survivors in South Africa, or a re-infection rate of 1.3 per cent. If re-infections are occurring three times as often with Omicron, that’s still means only 3.9% of those with natural immunity are getting re-infected with COVID. The fully vaccinated are getting infected with Omicron at a rate an order of magnitude higher than that.
We don’t really know how many people in BC have natural immunity to COVID because Canada has been extremely remiss in doing random-testing in the community the way most jurisdictions have done. But we can expect it is lower than what it is in London. That means London will be our best-case scenario for what’s coming.