The U.S. new case count dipped to 38 / 100K / day, versus 39 for most of the prior week. This appears mostly due to declines in new cases in California and New York.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 7/30/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
With more than 6000 new hospitalizations a day, we still have a lot more COVID hospitalizations than we would have flu hospitalizations, during a normal flu season.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker.
Given the estimated/observed effectiveness of vaccination at preventing COVID hospitalization (above), COVID remains slightly more dangerous than typical flu, even for the vaccinated. If I combine the numbers above with fractions vaccinated and not, I come up with about 2500 hospitalizations a day, for the 77% of the adult population that is fully vaccinated. And 3500 hospitalizations a day, for the 23% of the adult population that remains unvaccinated.
That, compared to about 2100 flu hospitalizations a day, in total, during a typical flu season.
So the risk of being hospitalized for COVID remains higher than risk of hospitalization for typical flu, even among the fully vaccinated/boostered population. Assuming that observed effectiveness above is correct.
