I’m afraid I only have time for a short, partial response today. Short version: Covid surveillance is hard, and there’s lots of noise in the data. But there are lots of smart people working hard on this, and in the aggregate we actually have a pretty good idea what’s going on.
I’ll address one of the questions you asked specifically:
So where are these numbers for variant spread coming from? Maybe hospitals do have special genetic tests and reliably do those? But then isn’t there going to be a pretty strong bias based on the fact that these are only for people who are getting hospitalized?
In Washington, much of the variant prevalence data comes from UW, which sequences a subset of the samples they receive. This is a bit complicated: some samples are fully sequenced, and some are tested for S-Gene Target Failure, which is a faster, easier test that is a fairly good (but not perfect) proxy for Omicron vs Delta. The UW sequencing is a good but not perfect sample of what’s actually happening in Washington. For details on this project, the person to follow is Pavitra Roychoudhury. Details vary, but there are multiple other institutions with largely similar programs.
More general answer: you’re asking good questions. They are all important, and they’re obvious to any smart person who thinks about the issue for a moment. Although I don’t have time to answer them all, I assure you that the smart people working on Covid have thought of every single one of your questions, and have good answers to every single one. Many of the answers are in Zvi’s excellent series of Omicron updates.
I live near the UW. As far as I can tell, the UW has done a great job of pandemic response. I got a COVID test from them early in the pandemic before there were alternative tests available.
I’m afraid I only have time for a short, partial response today. Short version: Covid surveillance is hard, and there’s lots of noise in the data. But there are lots of smart people working hard on this, and in the aggregate we actually have a pretty good idea what’s going on.
I’ll address one of the questions you asked specifically:
So where are these numbers for variant spread coming from? Maybe hospitals do have special genetic tests and reliably do those? But then isn’t there going to be a pretty strong bias based on the fact that these are only for people who are getting hospitalized?
In Washington, much of the variant prevalence data comes from UW, which sequences a subset of the samples they receive. This is a bit complicated: some samples are fully sequenced, and some are tested for S-Gene Target Failure, which is a faster, easier test that is a fairly good (but not perfect) proxy for Omicron vs Delta. The UW sequencing is a good but not perfect sample of what’s actually happening in Washington. For details on this project, the person to follow is Pavitra Roychoudhury. Details vary, but there are multiple other institutions with largely similar programs.
More general answer: you’re asking good questions. They are all important, and they’re obvious to any smart person who thinks about the issue for a moment. Although I don’t have time to answer them all, I assure you that the smart people working on Covid have thought of every single one of your questions, and have good answers to every single one. Many of the answers are in Zvi’s excellent series of Omicron updates.
I live near the UW. As far as I can tell, the UW has done a great job of pandemic response. I got a COVID test from them early in the pandemic before there were alternative tests available.
Thank you. This is clear and points me in directions that let me explore more and see through the fog of war.