Omicron Chaos: CDC Sharply Revises Estimate of U.S. Omicron Infections
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday sharply revised its estimate of omicron infections in the United States.
While the omicron variant has plagued the Biden administration with chaos, the CDC has revised their estimates of exactly how many coronavirus infections are due to the variant.
The CDC guessed the omicron variant accounted for 73 percent of all cases during the week ending December 18. On Tuesday, the number for that week was reduced to 22.5 percent, a massive reduction from 73 percent two weeks ago.
The CDC surmised 59 percent of all infections during the week ending December 25 were due to omicron.
CDC representative Jasmine Reed told Politico the discrepancy was due to a miscalculation of the omicron transmission rate.
“There was a wide predictive interval posted in last week’s chart, in part because of the speed at which Omicron was increasing,” Reed explained. “We had more data come in from that timeframe and there was a reduced proportion of Omicron.”
“Setting aside the question of how the initial estimate was so inaccurate, if CDC’s new estimate of Omicron prevalence is precise then it suggests that a good portion of the current hospitalizations we’re seeing from COVID may still be driven by Delta infections,” Gottlieb said.
As the omicron variant continues to confound the Biden administration’s management of the virus that Biden promised to shut down, the president reversed course last week and suggested the federal government cannot shut the virus down.
The first thing @JoeBiden and I will do in the White House is get this virus under control.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 3, 2020
But Biden’s statement is contradicted by an additional nationwide mandate he and his administration are apparently considering. Biden told reporters on Tuesday that he would force domestic travelers to get vaccinated if health experts agreed with the measure.
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday sent mixed signals about whether a domestic air travel mandate would be implemented. On MSNBC he seemed to suggest the mandate would be necessary, yet on CNN he said the mandate is not likely.
“I think [it] is reasonable to consider,” Fauci said on MSNBC. But on CNN he stated, “I doubt if we’re going to see something like that in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
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