I see. Not an ideal situation, then.

In other news, in the world of preprints... (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268782v1.full.pdf)

It looks like, consistent with South African data, that previous infection still protects decently against Omicron (55-60%) and around 88% vs. hospitalizations, same as the other variants. It looks like at this point that previous infection is more comparable to having had three doses rather than two, then. Countries with low infections before Omicron should take note and speed up boosters to the vulnerable.

Weekly update, Omicron continues its spread around the world. It will be hard to see when the wave peaks as more and more countries fail to keep up with testing.

In total 15.2 million new cases were reported last week (up from 9.13 million) to a total of 303,665,406
Also another 44,488 more deaths were reported (slightly up from 43,559) to a total of 5,497,160

Deaths still went down a bit in Europe now the Delta wave is behind, in the USA Omicron started while Delta was still going strong and deaths keep rising.

The continents

Europe reported 6.84 million new cases (up from 4.67 million) and 20,241 more deaths (down from 22,255)
North America reported 5.28 million new cases (up from 3.00 million) and 12,715 more deaths (up from 10,467)
Asia reported 1.46 million new cases (up from 656K) and 7,212 more deaths (slightly down from 7,549)
South America reported 930K new cases (up from 383K) and 2,100 more deaths (up from 1,703)
Oceania reported 371K new cases (up from 114K) and 87 deaths (62 last week)
Africa reported 324K new cases (up from 307K) and 2,403 more deaths (up from 1,523)

Corners of the world

USA reported 4.77 million new cases (up from 2.71 million) and 11,441 deaths (up from 9,234)
India reported 508K new cases (up from 84.4K) and 2,228 more deaths (slightly up from 2,017)
Australia reported 366K new cases (up from 113K) and 80 deaths (57 last week)
Canada reported 299K new cases (up from 226K) and 349 deaths (180 last week)
Brazil reported 163K new cases (up from 56.8K) and 769 deaths (680 last week)
South Africa reported 55.5K new cases (down from 65.2K) and 1,107 more deaths (402 last week)
South Korea reported 26.7K new cases (down from 34.6K) and 369 deaths (492 last week)
Japan reported 10.2K new cases (up from 2,420) and 5 deaths (7 last week)
Iran reported 9,823 new cases (down from 12.6K) and 215 deaths (300 last week)

It looks like the death toll from Omicron is now coming through in South Africa, 3 weeks after the 7 day average peaked. It is still much lower than from the Delta wave, however South Africa got Omicron under control quite quickly compared to Delta. Of course it could just be a lull while Omicron spreads on in less tested areas.

Canada certainly hasn't peaked yet, we're simply out of tests :/ Even restricting testing to essential workers still has Ontario at 100K tests pending results. However hospitalizations are still within capacity, it's mostly the staff shortages that are alarming.

Europe in detail

Germany, Norway and the Ukraine are now also exploding with Omicron as the wave moves Eastwards.

Global vaccination rate is now: 49.77% (+0.80%)

South America: 64.18% (+0.60%)
Europe: 61.60% (+0.50%)
Oceania: 58.45% (+0.48%)
North America: 58.29% (+0.31%)
Asia: 57.17% (+1.01%)
Africa: 9.62% (+0.57%)

Booster shots a plenty, yet new vaccinations keep slowing down.

Hospitals do continue to fill up:

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-reports-more-than-380-covid-19-patients-in-icu-over-13k-new-cases-1.5732690
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations

Hospitalizations: Thursday 2279 Friday 2472 Saturday 2594 (1353 fully vaccinated)
ICU: Thursday 288 Friday 337 Saturday 385 (137 fully vaccinated)

570 ICU beds left, and more become available as people in ICU from elective surgeries are getting better. Elective surgeries have been suspended again.

Also not good since we were already over half a million surgeries behind
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/with-more-than-500-000-fewer-surgeries-due-to-covid-19-delayed-surgeries-cost-some-their-lives-1.5700480

Oh wow, producing such a large uptick on a logarithmic scale is really worrying. For the first time Oceania has significant case numbers too. Omicron has a major impact.

Yep, if you look at Australia on a linear scale, the previous outbreaks are already 'invisible'
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

It's going to be scary to see how far India is going to go up. Russia is just starting to feel Omicron as well. Japan, after a long time of having seem to have defeated Covid-19 is also going straight up again. Their 7 day average was under hundred cases a day, yesterday they added 5,983 new cases.

New Zealand might be next. They contained the Delta wave at just under 200 cases a day yet can New Zealand hold Omicron back as well.

Previous highest number of cases in a single day was 904,626 on April 29 2021 with 5.8 million cases that week.
2 days ago had 2,740,389 cases in a single day and over 15 million cases last week.

Difference is 7,569 deaths in a day now vs a peak of 15,301 deaths in a day on April 28th.
The vaccines are definitely helping a lot, yet it will be 3 weeks before the full impact of today's case numbers is known and how far is it still going up further.

We will all get it in the end. It is inevitable. 

They just warned against that kinda thinking:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/rapid-spread-of-omicron-showing-tale-of-two-pandemics-rich-and-poor-1.5732819

While Omicron is thought to cause less severe disease in most people, especially those who are vaccinated, experts say characterizing the variant as "mild" can be problematic.

"You hear people say: 'Why are you worried about Omicron? If you're healthy and young, it's no problem, it's just a cold.' And ... that's completely dismissing the reality of millions of people in this country," Boozary said.

"It's that complete ableist language and tone and policy that's putting millions of people at risk."

Arya said it's "completely inaccurate" to call Omicron mild, saying people need to let go of the perception that the variant has transformed COVID-19 into the common cold or flu because not enough is known about the virus's long-term consequences.

Arya said dismissing Omicron as mild has been "very harmful," as is the notion from some that infection is inevitable because of the higher transmissibility of the variant.

"It centers our policy responses around young and healthy people who are well off and can afford protections," he said. "That's a big problem."

But true, this variant is much harder to dodge. So far so good though. As long as the schools stay closed we're Omicron free at home.
Meanwhile hopitalizations and ICU admittance keep rising steadily.



Another reason to keep social distancing is the flu. So far we've only detected 5 cases of Flurona (Covid+Flu co-infections) but you probably want to avoid getting both. The flu is still around

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/05/flurona-coronavirus-flu-symptoms/

Enough people that i know have gotten it for me to come to that conclusion.   

The brief respite from cases was nice to have for winter vacation. Sucks that I got a cold though. I just hope this wave finishes by the time I plan on traveling in the summer.

There are 200+ viruses circulating in humans, but they aren't readily exchanging genes. Most of the time there's no obvious advantage to borrowing one another's open reading frame or structural proteins even if such a thing was viable.

There's one precedent, though. Embecoviruses, the family of coronaviruses that include two out of the four endemic coronaviruses, borrowed the entire hemagglutinin spike from influenza. But this was literally a one in thousands of years event.