The U.S. is now down to 37 36 34 33 32 new cases per 100K population per day, down from 38 at the end of last week 37 when I checked it a couple of days ago 36 four days ago 34 33 two days ago. Daily new hospitalizations have fallen below risen to just over fallen below risen to just over fallen to just under 6000 per day. Deaths remain around 350 375 400 per day.
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 8/11/2022, 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
All the regions appear to have gotten the memo about the pandemic being over and/or all appear to be on the same page and/or substitute your own trite attempt at humor here. That is, cases are declining everywhere. But the effect isn’t large enough — yet — to generate a clear downward arch in the plot of all the states. When (if) that appears, that’s the point at which you can start to talk about a downward trend in cases.
No Pandemic for Old Men
One odd aspect of the last few months is the high number of hospitalizations, yet low number of deaths. The most recent data from the CDC show this:
Source: CDC COVID data tracker.
I finally got motivated to look up the place of death data from the U.S. CDC, available at this link. For a while now, hospitalizations and deaths have been increasingly concentrated in the elderly. And with that has come a shift in the site of death, for COVID-19 decedents. Shown below is the percent of COVID-19 deaths by site of death.
Source: US CDC data file, cited above.
Consistent with a shift of deaths toward the elderly, deaths in the hospital have fallen, and deaths in nursing home, hospice, and home have risen. (I should note that hospice in this case means in a hospice facility, and that death at home, while under hospice care, is classified as home.)
Collectively, those three sites are associated with end-of-life care for the frail elderly. And, in those sites, pneumonia in its various forms is frequently the proximate cause of death. It’s the last straw for a lot of elderly persons who are otherwise in poor health.
To me, this looks like COVID is taking its place alongside flu and pneumonia as a normal cause of death in the frail elderly. It’s just another one of many common respiratory illnesses that can be fatal to an elderly person in frail health.
