The Omicron variant advances at an incredible rate

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH is a dizzying thing. In the week to December 8th Britain saw 536 new cases of covid-19 ascribed to the Omicron variant, less than 0.5% of the number caused by the dominant Delta variant. But the week before there had been only 32 cases of Omicron—and by December 14th the case number was over 10,000. Omicron looks set to become the country’s dominant strain in terms of cases before advent calendars run out of windows.