I expect that Omicron's transmission advantage will also fluctuate wildly across time and place, but one thing that suggests to me it really is more transmissible than Delta or more capable of evading prior immunity is that incidence in SA was very low when it started expanding.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1469408386357866496
Indeed, the theory I proposed to explain why Alpha's and Delta's transmission advantages had eventually collapsed requires a large outbreak associated with the variant somewhere, as I explained back then.
https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1432702949390798862
Thus, if Omicron is taking over in Europe despite low seeding from South Africa (which seems to be the case now and is what you'd expect with low incidence in South African before borders closure), it doesn't work.
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1469351581921468421
However, this doesn't mean that you can straightforwardly infer a transmissibility advantage from a transmission advantage, which you can't! Unfortunately, we're going to see plenty of that again, but it will still be wrong. cspicenter.org/blog/waronscie…
The important point is that claiming a variant is more transmissible than another is one thing, but claiming that it's x times more transmissible than another and making projections based on that is quite another. The same thing, mutatis mutandis, is also true for immune evasion.
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