The U.S. now averages a bit over 11 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, up more than 25% over the past seven days.
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 4/12/2022, 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
Although case counts are rising, this still doesn’t pose much of a threat to most of us.
Let me work through a bit of arithmetic on that, regarding likelihood of hospitalization for the most at-risk population, the population over age 65.
Taking the most recent data from the CDC COVID data tracker, individuals age 65+ are currently being hospitalized for COVID-19 at a rate of 5.6 per 100K population per week, or under 1 per 100K per day.
If I then take the CDC data on effectiveness of vaccination in that group, and the fraction of that population by vaccination status, here’s what that all implies for the likelihood of hospitalization, per day, by vaccination status.
First, as we have seen repeatedly in the past, the un-vaccinated are a tiny share of the population, but a large share of COVID-19 cases. Among the elderly, those who are less than fully vaccinated accounted for about 10 percent of the population, but nearly 50 percent of COVID-19 admissions for this age group,
Source: Calculated from various data series on the CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 4/15/2022
If I then break that down into the daily chance of being hospitalized, it looks like this:
Source: Calculated from various data series on the CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 4/15/2022
The upshot is that even among the most vulnerable age group, those who have gotten the booster face an average daily risk of hospitalization from COVID of 0.0004%.
To put that in perspective, the 50.4 million Americans age 65 and older account for about 13.2 million hospitalizations in a typical year. Thus, the daily odds of being hospitalized for something, in that age group, is about 0.07%.
Comparing the two, the average elderly resident of the U.S. if vaccinated and boostered, is about 180 times more likely to be hospitalized for something else, than to be hospitalized for COVID-19.
This doesn’t mean that the elderly should throw caution to the winds with regard to COVID-19 hygiene. I just means that, at present levels, COVID-19 adds only the tiniest amount to their pre-existing daily risk of hospitalization.
Probably more telling is the same calculation for the un-vaccinated. For that population, even at the low COVID-19 hospitalization rate that currently exists in the U.S., the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization increases their overall hospitalization risk by a full 5 percent.
In short, for the unvaccinated elderly, the additional risk of COVID-19 hospitalization is roughly comparable to the average daily risk of hospitalization for stroke, in the 65+ population. In the case of COVID in the unvaccinated, it’s not exactly a self-inflicted injury. But it’s not exactly not that, either.
