Updates...
South Africa: Delta wave saw a consistent plateau in the 350-400 daily deaths range, then post-Delta they were down to maybe 25/day. The Omicron wave has now brought their 7-day MA up fivefold to 125/day. Still only a third that of Delta on relatively similar case numbers, so that's good. Omicron cases peaked about 4 weeks ago, so I don't much more increase in their deaths/day numbers.
UK: Delta wave peaked at ~170/day but the steady-state was more in the 125-150 daily range. Unlike South Africa, the Delta wave never went away. With Omicron, their 7-day MA has reached 267, so roughly 50% higher than any time during Delta. Omicron cases peaked a week ago, so we would expect another week or two of increases in daily deaths.
USA: Delta wave peaked at ~2000/day, with typical rates in the 1200-1800 daily range for most Delta. It dropped a bit prior to Omicron (getting under 1000 for a few days). Omicron deaths have now jumped up from that range to a 7-day MA of 1829. It has not yet reached the Delta peak, but we now appear to be at our peak case rate, so I expect that within the next week the 7-day MA of deaths will eclipse the Delta peaks by a significant margin and expect deaths to rise over the next 3 weeks.
Contrary to some predictions, it does NOT appear that Omicron leads to cases being way up but deaths going way down.
