Omicron does not grow “70 times faster” (bad math alert)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29587644
by pjdorrell • 5 years ago
11 3 5 years ago

All we have so far is this press release: https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-cov-2-infection

If the numbers in the graph are total growth in 24 hours, then omicron=10000 & delta=~140.

Calculate log(10000)/log(10000/70) = 1.86

Ie, omicron grows 1.86 times as fast as delta, or 86% faster.

That's significant, but 1.86 is a whole lot smaller than 70.

(If the numbers in the graph are something else, then we actually can't tell what the ratio is.)

Related Stories

Loading related stories...

Source preview

news.ycombinator.com