Seems the tame experts are still guessing, otherwise we have to draw the conclusion that they are deliberately misleading the public ( telling porkies ). We are in danger of 'protecting Delta' if we fail to let Omicron become dominant and displace it... and Delta is the bad guy.. Government policies should not interfere with the natural evolution of a virus, which is to become more infectious but less virulent. When a lot less people get sick with Omicron I bet Pfizer will claim the credit, even though they are selling gullible politicians a vaccine for a virus strain that does not need one, and looking forward to doing the same well into next year.
Good job neither you nor the source of your article is the Chief Medical Officer.
'Whitty, however, implanted a new idea in our heads: that Omicron is running almost as a parallel epidemic – that Delta is not going away, that Omicron is ‘building on’ it. But this is not what appears to have happened in South Africa, where the data presented by Discovery Heath and the South African Medical Research Council on Tuesday clearly shows Omicron displacing Delta in that country – to the point that Delta is now an endangered species. There is no parallel epidemic going on there.'
What is your source here? The idea is unfounded and just presented to cause confusion.
The best estimates initially were based on the South African experience .
That was all they could base it on but as Maaf pointed out there is difference in age of population, percentage of vaccinated population, percentage of previously infected population summer vs winter.
Whitty is right in saying that there are at present two epidemics going on here.
As your article points out omicron will displace delta as the dominant variant but this will not affect the increase in the overall number of cases because those suscptible to the delta variant will also be susceptible to omicron as well as the people previously immune to dellta but susceptible to omicron.
The South African outbreak of omicron is several weeks ahead of ours so already omicron has effectively displaced delta completely.
I did dome sums and tried to calculate the likely deaths based on deaths being 10 -30% of the Delta levels. My sums suggested infections would be 250k a day by Christmas: based on current levels I was being far too cautious.. Such high levels are unsustainable: the virus will run out of people to infect.
Yes the doubling time will increase (or R decrease) as the number of suscptible people decreases through vaccination, infection, or death but it is as yet unknown when this will become significant.
