All my various postings tracking the COVID-19 pandemic through the end of 2022.
Near as I can tell, the U.S. remains at somewhere around 29 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, down a bit over the last seven days. Monday’s Juneteenth holiday seems to have put the same sort of kink in the data as other Federal holidays.
Continue reading Post #1540: COVID-19 trend to 6/21/2022, Juneteenth holiday.
The U.S. now stands at 29 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population, down from 31 a few days back, and down 10% in the past seven days. The graph of new cases by region is now starting to show a well-defined U.S. peak.
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 6/21/2022, 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
It’s about time. This is the first day of summer, and we should proceed to a summertime lull in new cases. And, now that all the regions are trending downward, the decline for the U.S. as a whole ought to start picking up speed.
Anecdotally, I’d have to call this most recent set of new cases the “end of cautions” phase of the pandemic. In the past couple of weeks, within my own tiny circle of acquaintances, I’ve heard of three different COVID infections in families that were cautious and COVID-free to this point.
For that matter, Dr. Fauci got infected last week.
For my own part, I note that masking in the stores is almost non-existent around here now. That’s a good match for U.S data, which show the lowest level of mask use since Carnegi-Mellon began tracking this during the pandemic:
Source: Carnegie-Mellon COVIDcast.
Another indicator is U.S. air travel, which has almost completely recovered to the pre-pandemic level. So people are no longer hesitant to fly, mask or no mask.
Source: Calculated from US TSA data.
The result of those changes should be reasonably predictable, given how much virus remains in circulation in the population. The people who had previously taken significant precautions now become the last remaining large reservoir of people ripe for infection, as those precautions are dropped. And the last wave of the pandemic is the wave of the formerly-cautious.
It’s not as if the risks are high for the vaccinated and boostered. We’re still well under 300 COVID deaths per day, and just over 4000 COVID hospitalizations per day, both of which are concentrated among the elderly.
Absent some new and even-more-infectious variant of COVID — something that seems bordering on impossible, given how ridiculously infectious the current dominant variants are — I think this ought to be the end of it for now. And, near as I can tell, there’s nothing like a new and even-more-threatening variant on anybody’s radar screens at the moment.
The other human coronaviruses tend to have a wintertime peak, just like flu. That’s what I’d expect to see going forward for COVID-19.
I’ve said this before, and at some risk of error, I’ll say it again. Maybe it’s time to end the COVID-related portion of this blog, and return to whatever it was I did prior to to the pandemic. My expectation and hope is that, moving forward, COVID tracking will soon become the most boring hobby in the U.S.
The U.S. is still seeing an average of 31 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, same as it was more than three weeks ago. But what was an offsetting jumble of increases and decreases across the regions, three weeks back, now seems to be getting organized into a coherent downslope for the U.S. Omicron-II (BA.2.12.1) wave. Continue reading Post #1538: COVID-19 trend, finishing out the data week. Looks like the peak is finally getting organized
The U.S. now stands at 31 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population, not really very different from where we were over three weeks ago. That said, it’s about time for this latest wave to peak, and maybe this last little dip in cases is the start of that.
It’s tough to say. The indicators are mixed. When I run all the information through a blender and ponder the resulting data smoothie, I’m guessing this is the peak of the Omicron-II wave in the U.S.
Continue reading Post #1537: COVID-19 to 6/15/2022, now 31/100K, maybe that was the peak
Boring is as boring does. The U.S. remains at 32 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population. Continue reading Post #1536: COVID-19 to 6/14/2022, no change, BA.4+BA.5 now >20% of new cases
The official count of daily new COVID-19 cases rounds to 32, roughly the same as it was three weeks ago. The weekly-percent-change numbers are meaningless due to the final echoes of the Memorial Day holiday. Continue reading Post #1535: COVID-19 trend to 6/13/2022, still at 32/100K/day.
This is in response to an article in today’s Washington Post, about the unusual nature of the 2021-22 season for flu and other respiratory viruses.
It is of course a) based on anecdotes (at one point, last month, one hospital saw …), b) relies on a handful of quotes, and c) ignores any systematic data on the relevant issues.
Basically, the thrust of the issue is that there’s now some huge problem with flu and other respiratory viruses, caused by COVID. Which all the COVID deniers then immediately assume “cause by our response to COVID”.
What the Post completely, totally, and utterly fails to mention is that the 2021-22 flu season has been incredibly mild by historical standards. Just by way of illustration here’s cumulative hospitalizations for flu, 2021-22 versus the last fully-normal flu season (2018-19):
Source: CDC Fluview.
By eye, looks like flu hospitalizations for this most recent season were about one-fifth the normal level.
In other words, this flu season isn’t some sort of man-made disaster. It’s not some sort of natural disaster. Fact is, under no stretch of the imagination can you consider it a disaster.
But looming disaster is the gist of the Post article. And the gist of most of the comments. In the end, since there’s nothing actionable about the article, all it does is feed the trolls.
All of which could have been avoided if the Post had started with this one simple fact first. But then it wouldn’t have been such wonderful click-bait.
The seasonal pattern of flu has been disrupted this year. Normally — again from CDC — about 1.5% of all hospital OPD visits would be for influenza-like illness at this time of year. But this year, it’s now 2.5%. That’s interesting, I’m pretty sure that passes any measures of being statistically significantly different from the average prior year. But that’s all it is.
The COVD-19 new case rate is unchanged at 33 new cases per 100K population per day, pretty much the same as it was three weeks ago.
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 6/11/2022, 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
I can look back to my May 25 posting and see that my best guess, at that time, is that we were then three weeks from the peak of this wave. That was based on the behavior of the Northeast region, which led the nation by three weeks and had just peaked at that time.
From three weeks ago:
OK, if that actually turns out, then the Omicron-II wave will start to decline early next week.
So, while it seems like it’s taking forever for this most recent wave to dissipate, that’s not true. As yet, it’s taking just about as much time as you’d have guessed, based on the behavior of the Northeast region. And since that region has now formed a nice, neat top, there’s no reason to change that prediction.
That’s what I would call the predictable dynamics of the Omicron-II (BA.2.12.1) wave. As goes the Northeast, so goes the nation.
Whether or not the newest variants (BA.4 and BA.5) will change that, it’s too soon to tell. My guess, in a just-prior post, is that they won’t.
It’s a dreary, rainy day here in Northern Virginia. Which is the perfect time to consult Virginia and national mortality data on COVID-19 and death by all causes.
I’ll close this post by looking COVID-19 mortality data from Virginia, where we have relatively timely information on official new cases and deaths by age. My point being to show how few individuals have died from COVID-19 during the Omicron-II (BA.2.12.1) wave.
I’ve expressed that as a table of odds, below. A randomly selected individual had a one-in-X chance of dying from COVID-19 over this period.
Source: Calculated from Virginia Department of Health data. Population denominators are 2019 Census projection for Virginia.
In the past two months or so (the duration of this COVID-II wave, so far, in Virginia), the odds of a child dying from COVID were about 1 in 600,000. The odds of death for someone age 85+ was about 1 in 900.
Just to benchmark that, based on the U.S. life table for 2018, a man my age has a 1.4% annual risk of death from all causes. Pro-rating that to two months, and comparing to the COVID-19 data for the 55-64 age group, risk of dying from something other than COVID is about 25x higher than risk of dying from COVID.
Not quite as low as the likelihood of being struck by a meteor, but not high on my list of worries.
If I factor in vaccination and booster status — most deaths are still among the un-vaccinated — I’m more than 300x more likely to have died of something other than COVID, than to have died of COVID during this most recent (BA.2.12.1) wave.
At that level, I worry more about cholesterol than COVID. And that’s a good thing.
Am I still masking up in indoor public spaces? Sure, why not. It’s free and somewhat effective, and there still is quite a bit of COVID-19 in circulation. But, objectively, at this point, I can name a couple-dozen things that I need to worry about, regarding risk-of-death, far more than I need to worry about COVID,
The U.S. is still at 33 new COVID-19 cases per 100K per day, where it has been for roughly the past three weeks.
We still seem to be on hold here in the U.S. We remain at 33 new cases per 100K population per day. That’s about where we’ve been for the past three weeks. The seven-day percent change isn’t really meaningful owing to the impact of Memorial Day on the data.
Continue reading Post #1531, COVID-19 update to 6/8/2022, and yet more variants.
