Comment by thomasmg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomasmg | Hacker News Reader

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> the website you linked is falling over

I'm sorry about that... It works for me still. You might want to use https://web.archive.org/

> I haven’t seen anything indicating the death rate is increasing

I made a statistic myself, using the data provided there, looking at the "Daily Hospital Surveillance (DATCOV) Report" and then "Died". From the historical data listed there, I got the "Died" number for every second day, and took the average of 7. From December 11 to November 25, for every 2nd day, this is 61, 46, 42, 32, 32, 27, 26, 25, 25. So, 61 is the average of the last 14 days, and so on.

Update: I did some more analysis, and found that the "oxygenated" decreased from Nov 1 to Nov 19, and then increased since then. And "ventilated" decreased since as well, and now increased, but yes, not as high! So this would indicate that in fact, Omicron needs less ventilation. And death rate seems to be a function of ventilated and oxygenated.

> it’s also been reported that 80% of hospitalizations are “incidental”

OK... so yes death could also be incidental, as well as the increase in oxygenated... Yes, it could be. But what would be the explanation for this "incidental" increase? Some other infection? Remember it is summer in South Africa.

I'm not saying I know the answer, but if the data doesn't match what somebody is saying, then you have to ask yourself what is the explanation.

> Test positivity isn’t a measure of severity

No. But according to the article, "Dr Coetzee said that ..., but added that after one month the case rate in South Africa is already decreasing." With such a high test positivity rate, how can someone say "case rate is decreasing"? On the published data, I don't see any evidence that the case rate is decreasing: the numbers are very high, and likely the limit on the number of tests that can be performed have been reached. The WHO target number for test positivity rate is 5% I think. In a wave it is often higher than that, sure.

> So far the little data available indicates it’s likely highly contagious, even compared to earlier strains

I agree.

> is possibly less severe

Dr Coetzee said "the severity of the disease is mild". Of course there are multiple interpretations of that: it is less severe on average than the Delta variant. Or it could mean: it is like a common cold. It is not clear what Dr Coetzee meant here.

> I made a statistic myself, using the data provided there, looking at the "Daily Hospital Surveillance (DATCOV) Report" and then "Died". From the historical data listed there, I got the "Died" number for every second day, and took the average of 7. From December 11 to November 25, for every 2nd day, this is 61, 46, 42, 32, 32, 27, 26, 25, 25. So, 61 is the average of the last 14 days, and so on.

The problem with this is that this is the total number of deaths, not the death rate. You are correct that the total deaths is increasing, but this is to be expected when the total number of infections also increases. Even if omicron proves to be "mild", there will certainly be deaths associated with it.

> OK... so yes death could also be incidental, as well as the increase in oxygenated... Yes, it could be. But what would be the explanation for this "incidental" increase? Some other infection? Remember it is summer in South Africa.

I think the point here is that hospitalizations in general aren't necessarily increasing. People go to the hospital every day for any number of causes, including broken bones, pain, etc. The point is that more of them are infected with Covid than before. This doesn't mean Covid is driving more hospitalizations, it simply means that a greater proportion of people going to the hospital for unrelated causes happen to be infected with Covid at the time they go. This is in line with what you would expect if omicron is both more infectious, and less severe.

> No. But according to the article, "Dr Coetzee said that ..., but added that after one month the case rate in South Africa is already decreasing." With such a high test positivity rate, how can someone say "case rate is decreasing"? On the published data, I don't see any evidence that the case rate is decreasing: the numbers are very high, and likely the limit on the number of tests that can be performed have been reached. The WHO target number for test positivity rate is 5% I think. In a wave it is often higher than that, sure.

To be sure, the test positivity rate in SA is extremely high, so I think its wise to be skeptical of case numbers falling in recent days. We will see if the wave is already crested, or if it will continue to skyrocket.

> Dr Coetzee said "the severity of the disease is mild". Of course there are multiple interpretations of that: it is less severe on average than the Delta variant. Or it could mean: it is like a common cold. It is not clear what Dr Coetzee meant here.

I agree that there are lots of potential interpretations here, and a lot remains to be seen. It may be that it isn't less severe at all, and that what we've seen so far is being confounded by something. But with what little evidence we have, there is at least some reason to be hesitantly optimistic. Hopefully it remains that way.

> not the death rate

I reported the death rate. It didn't increase dramatically yet; only from 12 per day to 30 per day; and that in theory could also be "patient died with Covid" and not "because of Covid". Yes, number of ventilated didn't increase as sharply as would be expected from Delta. So it does look less severe, from the number of ventilated. Oxygenated did increase from around 400 to 800; here as well we are not sure about the cause.

> I think the point here is that hospitalizations in general aren't necessarily increasing.

You are right, the data on this web site doesn't show the total number of hospitalizations (irrespective of Covid).

> there is at least some reason to be hesitantly optimistic.

Yes, I agree.

> I reported the death rate. It didn't increase dramatically yet; only from 12 per day to 30 per day

The death rate per day is not what is typically meant by the "death rate", and it suffers from the issue I described: it will absolutely go up as long as cases go up, but that isn't an indication of severity. The "death rate" in the context of epidemiology means the number of deaths per case, not per day. This is what differentiates extremely serious diseases, like ebola, which are rare, but have a death rate of around 50%, vs the flu, which is common but has a death rate of less than 1%. So yes, daily deaths are increasing in South Africa, but the number of cases in South Africa is skyrocketing as well, so it doesn't really tell us much.

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