My wife masked up at the gym yesterday. Not at random — no matter how much fun that might have been — but because several friends of hers have gotten COVID recently.
Gyms are known to be risky places for COVID transmission. That was clear from epidemiological analysis done during the pandemic. And that’s unsurprising, given that COVID spreads by airborne transmission, and breathing hard is part of cardio exercise.
This means it’s time to get back in touch with the most recent statistics on COVID cases in Virginia. So, without putting in a lot of effort, I’m going to get a snapshot of reported COVID cases in Virginia.
Briefly: This is just the new normal. We seem to be on track for our regular wintertime peak in COVID-19 cases. Winter ’23-’24 looks like it’ll be about the same as winter ’22-’23. Whatever precautions you thought were appropriate at this time last year are probably appropriate now.
Our regular winter COVID 19 peak
The first thing I note is that we’re on track for what has become our normal winter peak in severe COVID-19 cases. That, based on hospital admissions for COVID, from the CDC, for the past four winters, as marked:
Source: CDC COVID data tracker. Annotations are mine.
Separately, Virginia still tracks total lab-reported cases. These are individuals who were diagnosed by DNA testing done in labs, not by “quick” testing typically done in the home. Again, we seem to be on track for an early-January peak in total new reported cases. Same as for the past three years.
Source for both of the above, less my annotations: Virginia Department of Health.
The upshot is that new cases, and new hospitalizations, are roughly where they were this time last year.
Nor has COVID itself gotten any more virulent compared to last year. The most recent prevalent strain of COVID (JN.1) appears neither more nor less virulent than any of the other recent strains (per CDC). Nothing has come along since Omicron that has motivated the Powers that Be to use up another Greek letter to name a significantly new strain. So JN.1 is just the worthy descendent of Omicron.
So — same timing as last year, roughly the same incidence as last year, roughly the same virulence as last year. Whatever precautions you were comfortable taking last year at this time, well, you should feel comfortable taking them again, now. Because this ought to be the peak of new cases, or nearly, if this year is like the past three.
To be clear, new cases are appearing in all age groups. This, from Virginia, for the past 13 weeks:
Source: Virginia Department of Health.
But serious cases overwhelmingly occur among the elderly. Below are the rates of hospitalization, by age group, from mid-December 2023, from the US CDC.
I don’t want to make light of this. The same CDC data source shows that COVID-19 cases currently occupy about 5% of all staffed hospital inpatient beds in the Virginia. And COVID-19 deaths account for about 5% of all current deaths in Virginia.
So COVID-19 is still serious and costly business.
But so is most of U.S. health care. And my only real point is that it’s not hugely different from last year at this time. The current increase in cases, mid-winter, is just the new normal.
The new normal, and a little calculation.
Let me quickly redo my “risk of exposure” calculation for my trips to the gym, based on an incidence of roughly 20 new cases per 100,000 per day, here in Virginia. As I have done in the past, to arrive at a guess as to how many people are walking around in an infectious state, I multiply the raw incidence by nine, to account for a) under-reporting of new cases and b) the average number of days that an infected person walks around being infectious to others. So I’m starting with an estimate that about 180 persons per 100,000 (0.18%) are currently walking around in Virginia, actively infectious with COVID.
With 25 people in the cardio room at the gym, the likelihood that:
- Any one person is infectious: 0.0018
- Any one person is NOT infectious: 1 – 0.0018 = 0.9982
- All 25 people are NOT infectious: (0.9982)^25 = 0.9559 ~=0.96
- At least one person IS infectious = 1 – 0.96 = 0.04 = 4%
Being in the same room as an actively infectious person is not the same as getting infected. That said, that’s a non-negligible risk.
I’d say my wife was entirely justified in masking up at the gym (along with several others). Based on evidence, not anecdotes.
And I was plausibly justified in not doing that. Based on ignorance.
But now that I know what the odds are, yeah, if the rates don’t peak soon, I’ll probably resume wearing a ventilated 3M N95 to the gym. At least for now.
Avoidable risks don’t change just because nobody’s taking them seriously.
