Tiens, encore un rassuriste :
Assuming, as data has indicated, that Delta cases stayed approximately constant during this time, these numbers correspond to Omicron case numbers growing approximately twenty fold in one week, a doubling time of approximately thirty six hours, sustained over a two week period.
This is out of touch with what we know about Omicron. Responsible estimates of the growth rates of Omicron in populations with better data (like the UK and Denmark) and prior data on the USA, have suggested doubling times in the range of two to four days. This has caused us (and the real experts) to characterize its rate of growth as “explosive,” and to say in late November and early December that it might attain dominance in the USA in a matter of weeks. And that’s all true. But a doubling time of 36 hours, sustained for over two weeks, is out of step with all the other data. It’s not credible.
Pourtant: à San Diego (Californie, États-Unis) le temps de doublement est de 1.4 jours [1], en Angleterre, autour de 1.6 jour [2], et en France entre 1.6 et 2.2 jour [3] . Alors certes, 36h c'est la fourchette basse, et il est possible qu'on soit plutôt autour de 48h de doublement, ce qui décale les prévisions (et voudrait dire que les 73% n'étaient sans doute pas atteints vendredi, mais qu'ils le sont très probablement aujourd'hui et même au moment ou l'auteur écrivait son article).
En plus, cette partie là n'est pas super honnête:
Every week a small percentage of US COVID-19 cases are subjected to genome sequencing, which identifies them by strain. Right now it’s about 3.6%, but it varies by state. The CDC collates this data to produce weekly reports on the prevalence of each variant in each of ten regions of the continental USA. However, the genomic data takes time to generate and process, then get deposited into genomics databanks, then get analyzed by the CDC, so the newest data is about two weeks old at each weekly refresh (today, sixteen days old; the week ending December 4).
Parce que le séquençage n'est pas la seule façon de reconnaître Omicron, et qu'on a des chiffres plus frais en utilisant une propriété du Virus vis à vis des tests PCR. C'est expliqué dans [1]:
To gain insight into the spread of the Omicron variant in our community, we are working with a large number of partners to track S-gene target failures (SGTFs). SGTFs are a feature of the TaqPath PCR assay that fails to detect the spike gene of certain variants of interest due to a deletion in these viruses' spike gene. Most Omicron sequences have this deletion while most Delta sequences do not. As a result, the proportion of SGTF in positive tests can be used to estimate the prevalence of Omicron.
Ah et il y a ça, c'est magnifique:
And this points to another big problem. These numbers don’t comport with the national case numbers and what we know about how variants interact. While huge case surges have been seen in the states in Region 2, which was already 2.4% Omicron in the latest measurements (the week ending December 4), as well as other Omicron-dominant areas like the UK, they haven’t been seen in most states elsewhere in the country. This pattern was also seen as Delta took over from Alpha in the USA this summer, but we’re not seeing it in most of the USA now.
Until the last few days, national case numbers were flat, and have since grown by only a few percent,
Et là, si vous cliquez sur le lien qu'il cite, vous pouvez observer un graphique qui dit l'inverse de ce que l'auteur essaie de dire: et pour cause, c'est un graphique mis à jour au fur et à mesure du temps, et quand il a écrit cet article hier, il n'y avait pas les données d'hier (forcément…), mais maintenant qu'elles y sont, on voit que les données d'hier (20 décembre) sont exactement l'inverse de ce qu'il sous-entend (avec 300 000 nouveaux cas on est à 50% sur une semaine (en comparant de lundi à lundi, parce qu'il y a des artefact liés aux week-ends), pas «seulement quelques pourcents».
[1]: https://searchcovid.info/dashboards/omicron-estimates/ .
[3]: https://twitter.com/Panda31808732/status/1472326809316433926 .