Reported infections in the U.K. have suddenly spiked in the last three days, up from 59,610 on Tuesday to 78,610 on Wednesday, 88,376 on Thursday and 93,045 on Friday.
Looking at the data regionally, the spike is currently much more pronounced in London, the South East, the East of England, the East Midlands and the North West than it is in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West and the West Midlands.
It’s not clear at this point if it is going to continue to rise, though the last three days’ counts don’t appear to indicate continued sharp growth.
It is also so far largely an artefact of massively increased testing, as the graph above with data for the U.K. up to December 16th shows.
Similar is true for Scotland. Positive tests have spiked.
But positivity is up only a little due to the large increase in testing.
How significant is it that the spike began on Monday December 13th, the day after Boris Johnson’s Sunday press conference when he warned everyone about Omicron and told them to get their booster jab? There was a huge surge in demand for booster doses starting that Monday and continuing throughout the week. Could the fact that this surge coincided with a similar surge in both testing and positive tests be more than coincidence? Perhaps people got tested before getting their booster, or just because of the dire warning of a new threat.
We would normally expect a spike in winter viral illness at this point in December, so there is nothing particularly unusual about it. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the Covid deaths trend for the U.K. is currently very similar to normal winter flu deaths at this time of year.
However, the recent announcement of the Omicron variant raises the question of the role it might be playing in the surge.
UKHSA has begun publishing a daily Omicron update. Friday’s shows a sharp increase since December 6th in the percentage of positive PCR tests with both S-gene dropout (SGTF, in purple below) and low Ct (under 30), interpreted as Omicron, reaching a majority of low-Ct PCR positives in England on December 14th at 54.2%.
In London it hit 80.8%.
Note, however, that the sample of low-Ct PCR positives used for this data will not be representative of the wider positives from the same day. Consider December 13th, the day the spike began, with reported infections in London (by specimen date) doubling literally overnight from around 10,000 on the 12th to around 20,000 on the 13th. The above chart shows that of these 20,000 positive tests, only about 5,000, or a quarter, were PCR positives with Ct under 30, and so able to show S-gene either present or absent. The other three quarters were either PCR positives with Ct over 30, so very unlikely to be infectious and possibly false positives, or LFT positives. We aren’t told the breakdown of these test types for London, but nationally around three quarters of positives came from PCR tests on that day and a quarter came from LFTs. This gives an approximate breakdown for December 13th in London of 5,000 low-Ct PCR positives, 10,000 high-Ct PCR positives and 5,000 LFT positives. With around two thirds of PCR positives having high-Ct above 30 (so low infectiousness), this may be an indication that the spike is being driven by a lot of people getting tested just over 10 days ahead of Christmas, ‘just in case’.
While Omicron (or at least S-gene dropout) was found to be 74% of the 5,000 high-Ct PCR positives in London on December 13th, it is very unlikely to be anything like 74% of the other 15,000 positives from that day, as Omicron is a new fast-spreading infection so the large majority of its positives will be low-Ct. This means we can’t assume that 74% of all 20,000 positive test samples in London that day were Omicron, just because 74% of the quarter of positive samples that were low-Ct PCR positives were Omicron. In other words, 74% is likely a large overestimate of the proportion of London positive tests on December 13th that were Omicron.
Along with the large increase in testing at the same time, this suggests the impact of Omicron on the real infection rate is being significantly exaggerated in the raw data. A more accurate picture would probably show Omicron in the process of quickly replacing Delta while also causing a modest seasonal spike in infections, as seen in the positivity rate, but not something as dramatic as the raw positive test data suggests.
How long will the Omicron winter spike last? There is some evidence it might be peaking already. The graph below shows Omicron samples by region and per day that have been confirmed by genomic sequencing (a subset of the S-gene dropout samples from the graph above).
Note the sharp drop in numbers in London and the South East from December 12th. If this is in any way representative of the real viral incidence (and the way the graph is presented as an “epidemiology curve” suggests it should be, though it is possible it is misleading in that regard) then it shows an outbreak already running out of steam in London and the South East.
Is this a bit optimistic? Not necessarily. The latest data from South Africa also shows a slowing outbreak. Here is daily reported infection data from the original epicentre in Gauteng province.
And here’s the positivity rate nationally.
The South African Government is itself reporting that the outbreak is slowing, and also that the hospitalisation rate is currently running at less than a tenth of the hospitalisation rate of Delta at the same point in the epidemic, 1.7% versus 19%. Bloomberg reports:
South Africa delivered some positive news on the Omicron coronavirus variant on Friday, reporting a much lower rate of hospital admissions and signs that the wave of infections may be peaking.
Only 1.7% of identified COVID-19 cases were admitted to hospital in the second week of infections in the fourth wave, compared with 19% in the same week of the third Delta-driven wave, South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla said at a press conference.
One possibility is that Omicron represents SARS-CoV-2’s transition to join its fellow coronaviruses as a cause of the common cold. That’s the golden scenario, and it’s not looking impossible right now.
Even if that’s getting ahead of ourselves, it’s clear that we are over-reacting to Omicron and need to dial down the panic before we ruin another Christmas.
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The Government obsession with these predictions contribute to the positive feedback loop they have created, making the NHS an inherently unstable system. It accelerates in only one direction, amplifying the number of cases which drive a stronger and stronger response which reduces our capacity, even capability, to function until nothing works anymore. A ‘runaway’ condition that will guarantee the NHS will be overwhelmed irrespective of Coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 – or any disease for that matter.
Totally agree though I’d add that by destroying the NHS this way they can sickly usher in the private healthcare companies.
We’ll put. There really is a moral obligation for anyone who cares about this country to not get jabbed or boosted as that is really the only public involvement in this cycle. If people refused, the cycle would be broken.
Or tested, or co-operate with NHS Test and Trace. We never had any of this nonsense with former pandemics and got through them just fine, and more quickly.
Playing the biosecurity state’s game is the road to prolonging the pandemic forever.
If we did not have all this PCR testing and gene sequencing we would never know anything about Omicron and would regard common cold symptoms as common colds, which abound at this time of year.
Co-operating with the biosecurity state is being a party to constructing this monster.
It’s deliberate
This pattern of false data has been repeated yet again – our old friend ‘testdemic’. I don’t know about insanity but such brainless acceptance of repetitive nonsense confirms a general stupidity.
Its gone beyond stupidity now. The general comments by a large swathe of the population is consistent with the sort of thing uttered by ‘normal’ citizens of Germany in the 30s. They have now developed a hatred of unvaxed and sceptics in general. No conversation is possible, every logical point is automatically turned on its head.
I am becoming disgusted to be a human in this society.
I’m happy to actually be human in this country of the living dead
100%
No good getting rid of Johnson before the SCP (Sage Communist Party), another leader would still have the same problem. The SCP have created a ‘coup’ using a health scare as the tool. Already infiltrated uni’s to turn the students. The ‘rebel; Tories are still thinking this is a LibLabCon problem
I fear any alternative to BJ would be a step backwards.
When did Johnson do anything of benefit to Britain?
There are no ‘good’ ‘rebel’ Tories.
They all will vote as CCHQ tells them to.
Just as every Labour or LibDem will.
‘They’ don’t have the problem. We do.
Tories, Labour, LibDems are houses in the same school.
They play house matches against each other, but they combine against us. No party with MPs in Westminster is there for us.
Yes quite.
BBC alarmist headline of cases surge 31% in a week.
So I went to the government stats page and it showed number of tests up 37%. So the positive rate is around 5-5.5%.
Therefore no drama.
Sadly without the context all people see is “surging cases” which causes them to crap themselves.
Also saw a ridiculous story of someone who tested positive a student I think proudly proclaiming they were going to isolate over Christmas instead of see family. What is the matter with these people?
They don’t like their family.
I have been suggesting recently, that the medium term infection rate has been 5% plus or minus a bit. Check the spike in testing since late October.
They want us to lock down for two weeks (sure) over Christmas. Circuit breaks do no good whatsoever, before the dip in daily deaths shows a proper dip. 111 yesterday is the lowest week day figure since September.
They are mentally traumatised by living in a culture where the young have been routinely killed for decades, since you ask. Don’t try getting that printed in a medical journal though…
I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people are hooked on poking sticks deep into the back of the throat and then thrust the same stick up the nose, scraping away for god knows what!
In addition, the repetitiveness of this will surely result in some tissue damage – a nice raw area – making the individual more susceptible to day to day nasties circulating.
What is the obsession?
Some is obsession, a lot is enforced through workplaces and of course now for events (if you’re not vaxxed) and lots of private events like parties people are asked to test themselves
Fair point, Julian.
most people are voluntarily doing it to themselves, every day!!
People I know are, yes, but many others are told to by their work, public and private sector
They were giving away “free” testing kits at an outdoor Christmas fair the other week, and people were grabbing them like they were going out of fashion!
Someone telling me yesterday that they’d tested themselves every day for a week now. I resisted asking if their nose or throat was sore yet.
This testing was because he’d recently been with a group of five friends (aged 60-70) and one had tested positive so he was concerned in case he had been infected. In the meantime one of the five friends had died of a heart attack. I again resisted asking if the friend had been recently jabbed…
Why didn’t you ask the question?
How is the suspicion about the killer vaxx going to grow if you don’t ask the obvious question?
The vaxx is the variant.
They are looking for their brains, and can’t find them.
If we gave up on all this testing madness, the level of real cases and deaths would likely be that of a normal flu season, there would be no pandemic.
There is NO pandemic.
It is a scamdemic.
One day you feel fine, the next day you have a cold, apparently a new experience for some…..
What happened to reducing use of plastic?? Mental.
See also face nappies. Unless I’ve missed it, the environmental NGOs who normally (and quite reasonably) make a thing about throwaway plastic pollution have been entirely silent about all the single-use pointless plastic crap created to cater for Covidian rituals.
Keep trying till you get a positive seems to be the policy for some.
That’s how LibLabConspiracy science works.
Apologies if you address this elsewhere, but is this the first ‘wave’ where LFTs have been included in vast numbers too? If positiv e LFT s are counted along with their ‘confirmatory’ PCR in these numbers does it mean that positive cases will be double counted?
It’s clear that Christmas is ruined for a lot of hospitality businesses, and judging by the local reports here of people baling out of the pub trade before they face bankruptcy through the loss of the seasonal lifeline trade, many businesses are already ruined. Perhaps Sunak will pluck more fruit from his Magic Money Tree (the one that’s provided plentiful harvests for Test & Trace, NHS apps and the rest of the gallimaufry of waste).
It was less than heartening to hear this morning that there is a COBRA meeting due, with all four countries, and, yet again, there is talk of “two week firebreaks” i.e. closed hospitality, closed schools, more societal and economic destruction.
I suppose the majority will continue to buckle down to this, persuaded by false stats, media propaganda and the torrent of lies and obfuscation from SAGE, and the rest of the criminal crew. It doesn’t even occur to most of the klutzes that their “free” jabs and tests are being charged to them; if not now, then in future tax increases, reduced medical services and so on.
Maybe it will be the last year they have to do it, they are likely hoping the businesses will be gone next year so no bailouts Its a self fulfilling mission creep to look like they’re giving assistance
Yes, I was out in central London last night and I reckon it was anything up to 50% quieter than what could be expected at this time of year.
It was actually a more pleasant experience as a result, but it’ll be a real kick in the teeth for hospitality.
On a positive note, it was still good to see so many people out despite the deadly Omicron plague running amok.
I had to make a work trip late in the day on Thursday this week and ended up on the last train home from the regional centre (a large city). It was like the last Friday train usually is – nearly everyone pissed, and for the first twenty minutes there was a drunken singalong involving a lot of the passengers.
I found it rather irritating as it had been a long day, but at the same time it’s encouraging to see this sort of normality!
Did you have to step over any of the half a million bodies littering the streets, that Whitty and co said would happen?
Panic! everybody panic! get your friends and family and facebook contacts to panic too! If you’re not freaking out, you don’t care.
Ramping up the testing will ramp up the fear mongering and will ramp up the jabbing in those susceptible to the propaganda.
There’s also an additional Christmas ‘boost’ / incentive to ramp up the jab rates. More pay! Article in Health Service Journal but it’s sub only, sorry. ( I don’t have a sub).
“GP practices and pharmacies providing covid vaccinations will be paid an extra £5 per jab between Christmas and the new year, as the NHS races to offer everyone aged 18 and over a booster jab by the end of the month.”
The ‘health scare’ is the Tool
Mrs Bee had a cold last week, tested herself the first time to see if it’s the rona, mainly to get the recovered status for travel and when in Germany.
She was negative then.
Yesterday she had the shivers etc. again, tested herself this morning and was positive, now on her way to make arrangements.
(Of course we will spend Xmas together regardless.)
She’s ultrafit and healthy, took and takes VitD, C, Zinc, Quercetin etc., is unvaxxed, caught it in the bus or at a sports class, has the same symptons as she had for her cold plus a bit of sweating.
Her Millennial neighbour in the flat above ours also got it, is triple vaxxed and has even stronger symptoms, is coughing all the time, which she isn’t doing at all.
A pub we wanted to go to just closed until the new year because of rona staff issues.
Bottomline:
I’d say this is now real in London.
Everyone seems to or will get it, whether vaxxed or unvaxxed.
It’s a medium strong cold for most, whether vaxxed or unvaxxed.
It will soon happen everywhere else too, up North and in France&co.
And it’s the best thing that could have happened, if they don’t screw it up by panicking, mindless boostering of the young or locking down and obeying it, which unfortunately they and most people are most likely to do.
They are agitating to lock down now, even before the figures of this latest flu bug
It doesn’t seem as severe as most ‘flu viruses.
Sounds like she had a cold which subsided, then exerted herself too much and the cold came back.
Could be, though the test was negative then, positive now.
The PCR will tell, sort of.
She only does it to get the ‘benefit’, and she had one scheduled anyway to fly abroad to spend Xmas with her mother, which is now likely being replaced to spending Xmas with me (I refuse to get tested to travel and to mask up to fly, itherwise I’d have gone with her, if course).
All I am saying is that, despite the general uselessness of the tests, this one does seem real and is spreading like wildfire- a builder scheduled to come today also just tested positive, light symptoms.
There is nothing anyone can do about it, of course.
But they’ll never accept that.
Very similar experience to me and my wife. Only tested positive after a couple of days of feeling unwell. There’s definitely loads of it going round in London, but it’s no worse than a nasty cold, and in no way justifies this level of disruption to our lives.
Omicron is the perfect way for the government to get out of this mess. When cases go sky high they can say that we don’t need the vaccines any more. They must know about all the vaccine deaths and injuries, but they obviously can never admit to it. Omicron is their “get out of jail free” card. Let’s hope they use it.
Hmm – I see no evidence that they want to stop this.
Indeed, quite the opposite. And why would they?
They won’t. They haven’t done anything rational or ethical yet.
As long as people still see this is as a health problem to be solved with testing, masks, isolating, distancing etc it will never end. It is a political tool and it would help more to look at what compliance is doing to the western economies before its too late.
Seek and ye shall find.
That is the guiding tenet of the Labour-Conservative coalition’s religion.
I read somewhere that the first 12 days after a jab have an increased risk of infection (which is why they are excluded from certain stats). Could the sudden urge to get boosted also be adding to the infection count?
Nobody who I talk to who is jabbed seem to know this. Anyone testing over the last week are more susceptible to the rona for Hanukkah, especially queuing up in the cold for 5 hours..
The Department of Fear and Brown Envelopes have been busy spending our hard earned tax pounds
I went to a gig in London last night and it was disappointing the amount of people of all ages who chose to wear masks when they didn’t need to.
The brainwashing has caused a pandemic of fear NOT a mild virus.
Was due to go to one at the Brixton academy on Monday – cancelled. Pathetic.
The BMJ has a go at Facebook/Meta for incompetent so-called ‘fact-checking’ – https://fos-sa.org/?p=7265
There’s certainly some circumstantial evidence that the huge rate of increase in cases is due to people already infected but with mild (or atypical) symptoms deciding to get tested ‘just in case’.
If this is the case then you’d expect the rate of increase to slow down significantly once this pool of people are exhausted. The impact of this would be to concentrate several weeks worth of data into only a week or so, with resultant very high per day case numbers.
We appear to be seeing the end of this effect in South Africa — if it is the case then we’ll probably see a similar slowing down in case numbers in the UK soon.
That said, I note that we’re due an early-winter covid wave in the UK at this time — I’d suggest that after a rapid decline in per-day numbers (back to around 60k per day) we’ll see a slower rise in cases up to around mid- to late-January. This ‘second wave’ could well exceed 100k cases per day or even 120k.
Would you, describe it as a cold or flu?
“Omicron surge is mostly due to ramping up testing” Well, Who’d a thought it?
Really? I get the impression that hospitals are “overflowing” with covid cases, and ITUs are “jam packed” with “The Unvaccinated”.
Amazing, isn’t it? I was told by a relative last night (who is a Covidian) that a consultant she knows who works in ICU has told her that 100% of those in ICU are unvaccinated.
I pointed out that this is unlikely, anecdotal, and not in accordance with figures published by the government, nor credible since most of the deaths are in the vaccinated (in absolute terms).
No facts, no reason, no data cuts any ice with her. She has been told a lie that she wants to believe, and so she is unshakeable.
She has also been told (and believes) that the way to end the pandemic is to get everyone on the planet fully vaccinated. Never mind that vaccination doesn’t prevent infection or transmission. She’s triple vaccinated and scared witless about contracting Covid.
So, it is the unvaccinated who are to blame for all this: they are the ones breeding all the mutations, and they are the ones that are perpetuating the pandemic. She thinks.
Oh, and she thinks that lockdown prison in Australia and New Zealand are wonderful. Who cares about civil liberties? – what counts is zero Covid.
With thinking like this from degree-educated folk, is it any wonder that governments get away with it all.
“She has been told a lie that she wants to believe, and so she is unshakeable.”
The people in a nutshell.
Given the efficacy of the vaccines wanes quickly, everyone on the planet would need to be jabbed within days of each other. Then there are reservoirs of coronavirus in wild animals so they would all need to be jabbed or killed within days of the big jabathon too. All those lovely bats…
“Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing”
It would be great if this is true but it is not sufficient to show that the positivity rate is little changed. It all depends on why people are being tested. If the prevalence is constant and the amount of testing increases then you would expect the positivity rate to drop because the people most likely to be infected (symptoms, exposed to someone who has symptoms etc) tend to get tested first and the additional tests will be for people less likely to be infected. Therefore if you increase the testing and the positivity rate remains the same then this suggests an increase in prevalence. Another way to look at it is the increased testing may well be because more people are getting symptoms. It could well be that the outbreak is driving the increase in testing.
Lots of people I know right now are testing before gatherings because that’s what people seem to expect now. Almost none of them have symptoms. Most likely many workplaces are also putting more pressure on people to test, regardless of symptoms.
Anyway, covid is unexceptional at a societal level and none of the measures undertaken have made any significant positive difference, all have been massively net negative, so none of this is of much importance. The only important thing is to fight with all our might for the future of freedom, human, truth and civilisation, and against lies and fascism. You’re either with us, or against us. Choose to be on the right side of history.
Same obvious scam used to simulate another wave. It must make things easier for the DS writers though, just re-purpose old articles from 6 months ago, word replace ‘Delta’ with ‘Omicron’ and swap out the graphs and viola! new article in minutes.
Looks like a post-booster surge to me
https://twitter.com/BurnsideNotTosh/status/1472131182699679757
“1 in 40 tested yesterday. 1 in 560 positive. Hypochondria exceeding sniffles 14 to 1.”
Remember all the “really bad colds” people have been suffering lately due to suppressed immune systems? Well, now everybody thinks that’s Omicron and the latest test-demic ‘confirms’ it.
Perception manipulation at work.
Here in NSW the cases have been surging but the serious hospitalizations (ICU) are not keeping pace, so probably Omicron. The satisfying aspect is that the case rate started surging just *before* NSW was opened up. The media must have been devastated.
It is hard to tell from this graph but the number of people in ICU is 20.
They’ve never known how many cases there are. And comparing death figures(however much someone gauges a death from covid) is therefore impossible. Even more so when the symptoms of the virus are somewhere between nothing and the mildest cold you can imagine. And most people wouldn’t even notice or bother to get tested.
In fact previous to this the doctor would have laughed at you and sent you home as a hypochondriac.
Let’s face it we wouldn’t have even noticed anything regarding this virus if they hadn’t have artificially bolted all of these onerous artificial rules on to society. That is how they took away your freedom. And now they are returning it but at a price. And they want you to willingly walk into your new cell. That is how they work.
The main way Omicron is and gets dangerous is when those who felt unwell, therefore took an LFT that then read positive and then booked a free PCR test slot went there standing in the queues in front of those test centres for hours.
Sensible Mrs Bee turned around after 15 minutes today.
They test for the flu since they’ve never isolated Covid-19. Which makes me wonder how they can tell there is a delta variant. They never isolated the virus but they use a test to show the damage of a solution does on monkey kidney cells then show the cellular debris as proof of the virus. So, they can use this method to claim an UNENDING! amount of variants. A lot of cancers and “viruses” are probably just different forms of parasites. Since the tests can’t differentiate between cold and flu and covid then doesn’t that mean ivermectin cures both the cold and the flu? Welcome to “they’ve been lying to us our entire lives about everything”. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
THERE IS NO “OMICRON” because C19 doesn’t exist!!!
It couldn’t be simpler than this!!!
They used to give us daily death numbers, then when that wasn’t bad enough they have us hospitalisation numbers, but clearly that’s not scary enough now. Could we see them above the line please?
“With around two thirds of PCR positives having high-Ct above 30 (so low infectiousness)”
Please can Will, in making this statement, explain how a RT-PCR may be used to determine infectiousness or is that a guess? Kary Mullis stated publicly a PCR test is not capable of doing that; massive over amplification above 25 has been shown to provide no useful information other than indicating a false positive. How many of the 5,000 tests had a CT amplification above 25?
This is utter insanity; the EU has persuaded/cajoled the 26 to isolate the UK – except for those deemed “essential”; Germany has now deemed Omicron in the UK a “virus variant” – its most restrictive measures now ensue as with Holland. The SAGE Doom mongerers now will be doing their best Iago act whispering in the ear of a politically fatally wounded Bozo – I hope someone will post the obit for the UK hospitality industry and send the urn of ashes to Bozo as a reminder of “My Finest Hour” …not
Any chance you could write an article about the continuing success of the state of Florida in managing Covid. They announced yesterday the distributuion of a new GSK oral drug for anyone who would like to take it for early treatment of covid. Everyday a reminder to people there are alternatives to Britain’s draconian repetitive measures that they know do not work.
Also please print Professor Norman Fenton’s recent findings along with coauthors Joel Smalley, Jessica Rose, Clare Craig and Jonathan Engler. Plus Dr Peter McCullough’s call for the IMMEDIATE halt of these experimental biologicals. Thank you.
Isn’t it sad and annoying that so many words are needed to state the bl**ding obvious?