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According to a widely-shared tweet (and also picked up by Townhall) (emphasis added):

Serious question since I'm not a dr. If omicron is contagious but not deadly (25,000 cases in Africa with no deaths) why try and control it? Why not let it go and let people get it and develop immunity? Especially for those who won’t get vaccinated? Pls no hate, I’m just curious.

Is it true that there have been no deaths in Africa due to the omicron variant of Covid-19 at the time of this tweet (December 23, 2021)?

LShaver
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1 Answers1

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There have been 75 covid deaths in the country of South Africa alone on the 23rd of December.

UPDATE: A total of 72,689 tests were conducted in the last 24hrs, with 21,157 new cases, which represents a 29.1% positivity rate. A further 75 #COVID19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 90,662 to date.

Virtually all covid in South Africa is omicron - SGTF here means that the s-gene has mutations which are characteristic of omicron that can be detected during a qpcr assay

From 1 October through 6 December 2021, 161,328 COVID-19 cases were reported nationally; 38,282 were tested using TaqPath PCR and 29,721 SGTF infections were identified. The proportion of SGTF infections increased from 3% in early October (week 39) to 98% in early December (week 48).

CJR
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    This does not fully answer the question. "Virtually all" does not mean "all". 2% of 30k infections is still 600 non-omicron infections. Given the incredibly low death rates even of the previous strains, I agree it is unlikely that none of these 75 deaths are omicron - but this is not a complete proof. The correct counterexample here would be any single instance of an omicron infection causing death. – Undo Dec 26 '21 at 14:15
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    if you want a proper probabilistic argument, you could say that, if there are 600 non-omicron infections and there is a 1% chance that each death is due to omicron rather than delta (which would be very mild indeed), then the chances are less than one in a million that none of them is an omicron death ... – Ben Bolker Dec 26 '21 at 16:49
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    @Undo Skeptics is good for Q's which misrepresent the source data. We can find/examine it and write "oh, someone is misinterpreting this part". But this claim has no link to any purported evidence. It's basically self-debunking. This isn't a science forum. The best we can do here is write "why would anyone even believe this? The opposite seems to be true". – Owen Reynolds Dec 26 '21 at 17:42
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    @CJR the answer also tacitly accepts that viruses exist, that death exists, that Africa exists, etc. How far down the rabbit-hole of craziness do you want answers to start building up a logical case for what they want to argue? – Dan Romik Dec 26 '21 at 19:05
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    @CJR That's definitely much more succint than Feynman's rant https://youtu.be/Q1lL-hXO27Q – D. Kovács Dec 26 '21 at 20:30
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    You wrote "75 covid deaths" but you didn't say whether they were from the omicron variant, and that is what the question was about. – Michael Hardy Dec 26 '21 at 21:34
  • @Undo I personally find singular counter examples as an answer very dissatisfying. They give no context at all. That said, at least one provided would complete this answer. –  Dec 27 '21 at 00:57
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    @Aserre : No, that's bad math. That would apply ONLY if the fatality rate for omicron is the same as for other variants, and that is precisely the question. – Michael Hardy Dec 27 '21 at 01:09
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    I seldom downvote things (and I suspect you can see that in my profile), but I have downvoted this answer because it goes on at length while avoiding answering the question that was actually asked. The question is whether the fatality rate for the omicron variant is much less than for others. No attempt to answer that is in this answer. – Michael Hardy Dec 27 '21 at 01:12
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    @MichaelHardy, I'm confused: are we reading the same question? The precise wording is "Is it true that there have been no deaths in Africa due to the omicron variant of Covid-19 at the time of this tweet (December 23, 2021)?" **not** "is the fatality rate of omicron much less than that of other variants" ??? – Ben Bolker Dec 27 '21 at 02:01
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    @BenBolker : To say that there have been no deaths caused by the omicron variant is not all that different from saying its fatality rate is much lower. It's the same as saying its fatality rate is zero. At any rate, this answer says there have been 75 deaths but doesn't say whether any of them are from the omicron variant. – Michael Hardy Dec 27 '21 at 02:41
  • @BenBolker : QUOTE if you want a proper probabilistic argument, you could say that, if there are 600 non-omicron infections and there is a 1% chance that each death is due to omicron rather than delta (which would be very mild indeed), then the chances are less than one in a million that none of them is an omicron death END QUOTE That doesn't make sense. You say there have been 75 deaths. If each has a 1% chance of being from omicron and they are independent, then the probability that none of those 75 is from omicron is 0.99^75 = 0.4705866. – Michael Hardy Dec 27 '21 at 02:45
  • @MichaelHardy: (1) you're right, I had the numbers mixed up. There is a probabilistic argument here but I need to think harder to put it together correctly (your answer is conservative, mine is anticonservative). (2) I still think you're mistaken about the meaning of the question. (3) Even if I come up with a proper probabilistic argument, it might be off-topic as an answer since it would be "original research" (based on the data cited here). – Ben Bolker Dec 27 '21 at 13:44
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    [Here](https://www.samrc.ac.za/news/tshwane-district-omicron-variant-patient-profile-early-features) is a report from the South African government showing six deaths from omicron out of 166 patients. – LShaver Dec 27 '21 at 22:17
  • @LShaver That doesn't seem to specifically distinguish between variants in patient outcomes – CJR Dec 27 '21 at 22:47
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    From the report: "Though the NICD has confirmed that almost all cases of SARS-C0V-2 in Tshwane are due to the new variant, we have not been able to establish that in every instance the variant is Omicron as the PCR machine in use at the SBAH laboratory does not screen for the S-gene. A reasonable assumption is being made that the cases described here represent infection with the new variant." – LShaver Dec 28 '21 at 00:32
  • @LShaver that report should be added to the answer. – tuskiomi Dec 30 '21 at 17:25