COVID Odyssey: New Year Fear ~ Post #928: How sky high are these PI hypotheses?

Hi PI

How the New Year drew near
We dread the clear new fear
Now sky high rear these
PI hypotheses
How soon ere PI appear

Alan Grace
2 January 2022

We assume that the next upcoming COVID-19 VOC (Variant of Concern) may be called PI when it is eventually comes/ is identified. We look at a possible range of values for r (daily increase) and Ro for PI.

We wonder if this new variant will arrive before PI Day on 3/14 (14 March)?

We base our estimates for Ro for the upcoming PI variant of COVID-19 substantially using π ~ 3.14159.

OMNICRON arrived in the community in New Zealand on Christmas Day after a visiting DJ from the UK failed to self-isolate while waiting for a test result which turned out to be positive. New Zealand is still waiting to see if any new cases occur. i.e. If there is community transmission.

We base our estimates for Ro for the PI variant on r and π. We assume that a two-day increase in new case numbers is likely to be at least π ~ 3.14159. This means that case numbers could be more than triple over a two-day period and r = SQRT(π).

We use this table for our estimates:

We use our formula to estimate Ro:

We note that even with OMICRON, new case numbers have come close to doubling daily at times.

Hence for PI we obtain a range for Ro from 13.736 to 20.01955 assuming n = 10 days.

We have already used this image:

Our estimate for PI for Ro starts at 13.736.

We assume that the centre of the circle for PI will be PI greater than 13.736 at 16.87787 and that the upper bound will be PI greater again at 20.01946.

This would make PI at least as transmissible as the measles. We certainly hope this will not be the case. Sadly it may be.

This means that without any form of isolation, one person infected with PI may infect on average around 13.75 to 20 others over a 10-day infectious period.

Since the table also applies to the OMICRON variant, this post confirms that Ro for OMICRON may also be at least partially within this range. Our original range for Ro for OMICRON may have been as conservative as we believed.

We have already used this table:

See:

COVID Odyssey: Winter Windup 13 ~ Is the COVID-19 Delta variant as infectious as measles?

For background and definitions see:

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