#16,464
One of the realities of life in this pandemic is that our disease surveillance and reporting capabilities aren't as good as we'd like; they vary considerably from state to state, and they are further degraded by interruptions due to 3 major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's) all within 5 weeks time.
Case in point, just two weeks ago the CDC added the Omicron variant to their Nowcast projections (see CDC Nowcast: Omicron Begins To Show Up Around The Country), which they initially pegged at 2.9% of all cases.
Six days later (Dec 20th) the CDC revised the previous week's projection up to 13%, and announced a stunning 73% of New Cases Were Likely Omicron.
Today, we get another shifting of numbers, with Omicron rolled back to a still hefty 58% share of all cases, and last week's numbers being adjusted down by more than 2/3rds, to just 22.5%. The previous week's number was cut to just 6.6%
I'm sure they have good reasons to believe this weeks numbers to be more accurate, but given the wide swings in the numbers we've seen over the past 14 days - and the ongoing gaps in reporting over the Holidays - it is probably best to take all of these numbers with a large grain of salt.
I don't really expect to see the daily numbers sort themselves out until late next week. But what we can be pretty sure of is that Omicron is making inroads across the country over a very short period of time, and shows no signs of abating.
The national map below, however, shows that Delta is still very much with us in many parts of the country.
Stay tuned, and fasten your seat belts. January is still going to be a bumpy ride.
