https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/omicron-found-to-grow-70-times-faster-than-delta-in-bronchial-tissueUnder perfect settings, a person can produce a viral concentration amongst bronchial tissue 70x that of someone with the delta. So it is only theoretically that someone could infect another person with omicron at some exponential rate. But real life is not in perfect settings.
An infected person with omicron is not sitting on a train, with access to hundreds of people coughing on everyone with close contact totaling 15 minutes or so (enough to build a sufficient viral load and get the person infected). So if you could individually take a concentration of the virus and distribute it amongst a portion of the population, you would find the viral load to be 70x that of delta.
Not that in the data we would see a 70x mark in cases.
replicates faster in the lungs.. not spreads to 70x more people!!!!
also not 70x more virus..
as there are only so many cells in the lungs. and only so much damage that can be done.
read the link you referenced
it replicates in the cell 70 more virus per cycle, but each cycle is 10x longer
EG if delta was a 2x per hour
2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048 in 10 hours
omicron is 140(x2x70) in 10 hours
2 140 in 10 hours
as you can see at the 10th hour there is less virus in a omicron infected lung
which is why its less damaging to people.
more virus per cycle, but slower cycle. .. its math. try it
the reason for the "spread" is more about people not isolating when infected because they are not getting symptoms to realise they need to isolate
meaning.
if someone with delta is not going to get symptoms for say 3-5 days, he may hang around with a couple people a day for the days(day 4 and 5) where there is incubation enough to exhale enough virus to cross-transfer before symptoms start.
where as the omicron people wont get symptoms for a longer period. so they may not get symptoms for 10 days. but be at the cross-transfer risk for days 8,9,10 meaning 3 days of risk to other without realising it instead of 2
thus instead of infecting 3-4 under delta.. its risking infecting 3-6 under omicron(depending on social distance compliance)
this is why you are not seeing covid positive cases increase by 70x .. because its not spreading at 70x.
UK had 100 daily cases of omicron 5 weeks ago
if your 70x spread number had any merit. it would be
100 7,000 490,000 34,300,000 2,401,000,000 168,070,000,000
sorry but its more like
100 360 1,296 4,666 16,796 60,466
because the stats are saying that this week the daily numbers are that ~60% of the 100k cases are omicron (~60k)
yep 60k after 5 weeks not millions or billions like you wish YOUR math has assumed