True for hospitalizations and deaths. Not true for cases. Dec 23 was the second largest # cases in the pandemic. Many counties are not posting numbers during the holidays. We won’t know what the true numbers until Jan 2. I’d be shocked if they don’t skyrocket. Hopefully hospitalizations and deaths will remain low considering nearly all US adults have some sort of immunity (vaccine or infection).
Cases are actually higher as the peak you see from last year in that chart is actually in January, a week or two after Christmas get togethers.
Hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths are all lower, but last year at this time we had almost no one vaccinated by the 27th of December. Far more of interest will be to see how those three metrics compare to the Delta surge over the summer, but since those are all lagging indicators, we don’t know yet.
Same chart, start date last year on this date.
Link with those parameters in place as a starting point.
I was trying to say that right now, before we see the results of the holiday surge, hospitalizations are pretty damn high.
Check out the number of cases posted today (with not all counties reporting due to holidays). By far the highest in the pandemic. Set the interval dropdown to “new per day”
USS Milwaukee:
Omicron is “not the same disease we were seeing a year ago” and high Covid death rates in the UK are “now history”, a leading immunologist has said.
Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University and the government’s life sciences adviser, said that although hospitalisations had increased in recent weeks as Omicron spreads through the population, the disease “appears to be less severe and many people spend a relatively short time in hospital”. Fewer patients were needing high-flow oxygen and the average length of stay was down to three days, he said.
John Bell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago of intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely, that is now history, in my view, and I think we should be reassured that that’s likely to continue.”
Not really helpful either way. Last year’s wave started earlier if memory serves.
Pakistan is at 0.5-0.8% right now*. Few hundred cases.
Last year we were at thousands.
August 2020 we were seeing cases collapse. Aug 2021, they were skyrocketing.
We put too much stock in previous trends IMHO.
*We seem to be in a grace period right now. Fully expect to get hammered soon.
I got my parents boosted as soon as they were eligable and I have an appointment for the 1st for my own booster.
New Zealand only had 18 community cases yesterday. Down from 200 daily cases mid November. Presumably this is the effect of high vaccination rates (75% of total population and 90% of eligible population have two shots). If it wasn’t for Omicron I’d say we are about to eliminate the virus again, but Omicron is knocking at our door. Even if the new variant is less severe, it could be a problem for our health system if the numbers spiral out of control.
New Zealand has pretty much avoided the pandemic so far. But 75% of your population has had two doses of vaccine, so even if omicron does get loose in the country you probably won’t be hit too badly.
That’s it, I’m cancelling my vacation in Boston-area wastewater. When will this madness end?
I’m getting tired of hearing, “oh, it’s milder so no worry”.
California is the first US state to record 5,000,000 COVID-19 cases:
Texas is past 4,500,000 and Florida is just under 4,000,000 at the moment, for perspective.
Connecticutt (currently with just over 429,000 total cases) is helping people out:
Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday his administration procured about 3 million at-home kits, each containing two tests, and would distribute them to cities and towns, public health departments, school districts and others over the coming weeks. Municipalities, he said, would begin receiving test kits and masks Thursday and allocation would be based on population.
The article names several towns and describes their efforts.
Love that dirty water.
The emerging experience in Australia is maybe less optimistic. Vaccination rates are high [85-95% of people over 16 are double-vaccinated, and a booster program at capacity].
The national plan called for easing back on restrictions as vaccination thresholds were met, but unfortunately this coincided with the emergence of omicron, and now we are seeing massive rise in cases. In New South Wales, which enjoyed zero or near-zero covid cases for much of 2020-21, we have now got 6000+ new cases per day. There is disruption to health and transport services as the number of contacts are required to isolate. The capacity demand on hospitals is rapidly increasing but so far ICUs and attributable deaths remain low, but the growth is still exponential, so there is cause for concern.
283,175,979 total cases
5,430,520 dead
251,795,870 recovered
In the US:
54,148,544 total cases
842,161 dead
41,325,110 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
The problem is that vast majority of the 25% unvaccinated are covid-naïve - we have had minimal levels of covid circulating in the community. As noted by @Banksiaman, we need to be looking to the Australia omicron experience for the best and most relevant guide to how omicron infection will go, and it isn’t hopeful.
The aim for January 2022 is to continue to hold omicron at the borders, while the booster program (for those more than 4 months from 2nd vaccination, which is the vast majority of the vaccinated) rolls out, as well as the initial vaccinations for 5-12 year olds.
The trouble is that there are now so many omicron cases identified at the borders, it’s going to be very hard to prevent a leak.
Denmark has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe and also now also has the highest rate of infection in the world thanks to omicron, it is that infectious. Once in and spreading in the community it is likely to continue to do so based on experiences so far.
90% of their infections are in vaccinated people so that is certainly a concern for even a well-vaccinated country but they are also seeing that reduced rate of severe disease and death that comes with omicron.
Whether that is due to previous strain exposure is currently unknown but I agree that Australia is a decent example is what is likely to happen for similar countries.
As for any hope? well, though no real comfort, if any strain so far were going to march through a population then better it be this one.
I certainly accept that vaccinated people will get omicron infection, although trying to ensure that people have had recent boosters will reduce that somewhat. The issue is with hospitalization rates, because there isn’t sufficient good data on omicron hospitalization rates in that group that have never had any exposure to covid and are not vaccinated.
And I turned on the news today to find that a recent arrival from the UK broke their at-home isolation (after 7 days in managed isolation), and went out on the town before they had returned a negative 9-day test. Of course, that 9-day test was positive for omicron, so it looks like we don’t get January free from omicron after all.