You need to look at the raw numbers as well.
Omicron in its many variants is clearly of exponentially less concern at any given number per 100K than Delta et al. were. Did any of those DC bigwigs that were infected at the Gridiron dinner end up in the hospital?
“Sixty percent of Americans, including 75 percent of children, had been infected with the coronavirus by February, federal health officials reported on Tuesday … The highly contagious Omicron variant was responsible for much of the toll. In December 2021, as the variant began spreading, only half as many people had antibodies indicating prior infection …”
In this kind of statement, the use of a percentage is meaningful because a total number (implicit in this case) is also given.
I guess there’s no easy way for the average person to find out if they’ve had an asymptomatic bout of the covid in the past half-year or more. Sometimes I actually wonder if I myself have some kind of “long covid” going on.
I guess I wasn’t clear. I meant to say also finding out if you had an infection a long time ago, like several months to a year or more ago. Not last week or last month. And distinguishing having had a viral infection from immunizations in the same timeframe. If some “long term” covid side effects might potentially persist for that long, that would be of interest to know. It might help in diagnosing some otherwise hard-to-explain symptoms.
You were clear. That’s what antibody tests are for. That’s what the study was based on.
Alameda County creeping up slightly, hardly surprising given how many people I see dispensing with masks in high-risk environments. Personally I’m wearing my N95s a lot more.
| COVID Inpatient Bed Utilization | COVID Hospital Admissions per 100k | Cases per 100k | COVID-19 Community Level | notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/24/22 | 8.0% | 9.1 | 106.02 | Low | |
| 3/3/22 | 5.6% | 7.4 | 279.24* | Medium* | *definitely wrong |
| 3/10/22 | 4.5% | 6 | 60.07 | Low | |
| 3/17/22 | 3.1% | 4.1 | 47.93 | Low | |
| 3/24/22 | 2.5% | 3.8 | 49.92 | Low | |
| 3/31/22 | 2.2% | 3.1 | 50.14 | Low | |
| 4/7/22 | 1.7% | 2.3 | 59.83 | Low | |
| 4/14/22 | 1.9% | 2.6 | 30.28 | Low | |
| 4/21/22 | 1.8% | 2.8 | 153.23 | Low | |
| 4/28/22 | 2.0% | 3.7 | 131.63 | Low |
Even if inpatient bed utilization has been edging up a little, as in Alameda, values in the low single digits are probably as good as it gets.
The data for CA overall have been showing similar trends, although deaths to the middle of last month were still steadily dropping. (Note that the timeframes on the ordinates of these two plots are different.) Of course, as we well know, deaths lag behind cases and hospitalizations by a couple of weeks.
This today from the CA covid website:
Values on the ordinates aren’t given, which is somewhat annoying, but the plots show general trends.
Alameda County’s cases per 100K this week was pretty close to the Medium tier breakpoint.
| COVID Inpatient Bed Utilization | COVID Hospital Admissions per 100k | Cases per 100k | COVID-19 Community Level | notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/24/22 | 8.0% | 9.1 | 106.02 | Low | |
| 3/3/22 | 5.6% | 7.4 | 279.24* | Medium* | *definitely wrong |
| 3/10/22 | 4.5% | 6 | 60.07 | Low | |
| 3/17/22 | 3.1% | 4.1 | 47.93 | Low | |
| 3/24/22 | 2.5% | 3.8 | 49.92 | Low | |
| 3/31/22 | 2.2% | 3.1 | 50.14 | Low | |
| 4/7/22 | 1.7% | 2.3 | 59.83 | Low | |
| 4/14/22 | 1.9% | 2.6 | 30.28 | Low | |
| 4/21/22 | 1.8% | 2.8 | 153.23 | Low | |
| 4/28/22 | 2.0% | 3.7 | 131.63 | Low | |
| 5/5/22 | 2.2% | 3.8 | 184.34 | Low |
NY Times’ data shows a steadier upward trend.
Not based on a large number of hard data and more anecdotal but in several companies (own, my wife’s, from several friends) the number of positive cases internally have gone up quite a bit over the last few weeks. Since Bay Area has a high vaccination rate this won’t translate in significantly higher hospitalization and deaths but there will be most likely a point in several months where I could see hospitalization increase more significantly as the booster shot protection will diminish (for hospitalization, less for death). It is not good to read that there might be a shortage in the fall of vaccines for additional booster shots
I’ve been hearing of more cases lately. A friend’s neighbors got it after flying from Oakland to New York for a Phish concert.
I hadn’t heard of this. That would be a pretty sorry situation, given the amount of time available for production. Or is shelf life the issue? I was expecting we’d all need a covid booster in the fall, around the time of annual flu shots (September, October).
Seems like there won’t be any shortage unless the government recommends boosters for everyone without providing any funding for it.
It will be important that as many people as possible will get a (second) booster this fall/winter to keep the hospitalization numbers low and so strongly recommending the booster to everyone (even considering to include school kids at a certain age when they are back at school in September) - at the same it is also clear that the current political discussion in Washington make it clear that there is an ongoing uphill battle to get sufficient pandemic budget (which goes far beyond just money for vaccination shots) - and if we have learned something in the last 2.5 years - if the US government can screw it up they will do it wrt pandemic planning
Seems like a majority of the members of the House and Senate are either pretending the pandemic is over or deny that it was real in the first place. Unless and until there’s a new variant that significantly increases hospitalizations and deaths, funding will be a hard sell.
From the STAT article:
A bipartisan deal to give the administration $10 billion for the Covid-19 response has been held up over disputes about public health policy related to migrants on the southern border, and it’s unclear if the funding has a path forward.
It’s dumbfounding how an only tangentially related issue can hold up a major health-care budget item like funding for periodic covid vaccinations and outbreak response. Astonishing, really, although experience has shown that congress can muck up almost anything these days.
It’s not all that tangential.
From the PBS article:
The federal order says efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to provide vaccines to migrants at the border will step up in the next two months.
Compared to the total amount of vaccine needed to protect the general population, the amount necessary to give vaccinations to immigrants at the border (and follow-up boosters after that) is in the noise. The argument that asylum-seeking immigrants pose a covid health problem is ludicrous since this can easily be (and could have been to now) done. Only a dizzy red-hat Trumpist would think otherwise. It’s good to hear that the current plan is to provide covid shots to these people.
So I still think the immigrant issue is only tangentially related to our national covid response needs, although I won’t belabor the point.
This has nothing to do with vaccinations or public health, it’s just about using Covid as an excuse not to let asylum seekers into the country. The Republicans have linked these essentially unrelated issues.
