Monday, December 13, 2021

How to track the Omicron variant in close to real time

 

 - by New Deal democrat

No economic data today, and Covid information is pretty useless because of lack of reporting over the weekend. I drafted a long piece about the state of the American consumer, which I’ve decided to put up at Seeking Alpha, since, hey!, why shouldn’t I earn some lunch money for it? I’ll post a link when one is available.

But in the meantime let me drop this link by Dr. Trevor Bedford, an expert in the genetic evolution of viruses. He is tracking the number and percentage of all cases that are the Omicron variant in several countries, including the US, from daily reporting. Here is what today’s graph for the US shows:



Note that this is in log scale, and the data lags by 10 to 14 days. What we can say is that IF the trend has continued, by now about 10% or more (10,000 or higher) of all cases in the US are Omicron, and one week from now, about 50% will be. 

Checking this daily for the next few weeks will keep you well ahead of the punditry you are reading in most media.