I knew it!!
Important quote:
The findings, which estimated Omicron’s severity after accounting for the impact of vaccines, should reinforce the importance of inoculations and booster shots, experts said. Vaccines helped keep hospitalizations and deaths relatively low during the Omicron surge compared with previous variants.
I’ll add that prior recent infection was probably also helpful. Africa had a mild Omicron surge because they had a really bad Delta surge.
Study doesn’t track. Were all of those reports of fewer people on ventilators erroneous?
I have seen the percentages of deaths by age group. I know that vaccinations did not jump up sharply between Delta and Omicron. I do not believe that millions of people were simply protected because they’d already contracted Delta.
All I can say is what they found in the study.
Once taking into account confounding factors, such as “vaccinations, comorbidities, demographics, and healthcare utilization” the risk of hospitalization and mortality during the Omicron wave and prior periods of time was similar.
The makeup of SARS-CoV-2 patients was different across time periods with respect to those confounding factors. For example, in the Winter of 2020-21, when mortality rate was highest, 99.9% of patients were unvaccinated, but by the Omicron wave only 38.2% were unvaccinated. Patients were also considerably older in 2020-01 (47.4 ± 21.2) compared to Omicron (41.1 ± 21.6).
So, an Omicron patient was likely to be vaccinated and younger, both of which are protective.
The bottom line (according to the study) is that the overall rate of mortality was much lower for Omicron, but the risk of mortality stayed the same for an unvaccinated person of the same age and with the same comorbidities throughout the pandemic.
Get vaccinated.
I am just not understanding the point of the study. The unvaccinated were still among us during Omicron. I am reasonably sure the peak months for total number of unvaccinated infected were during Omicron, given the high numbers of infected. The hospitals and morgues should have been spilling out into the streets. And as I mentioned the different manifestations of Omicron. Which somehow comes out to be “exactly the same” according to this study.
I’m pretty sure the peak months for “unvaccinated elderly” catching covid we’re at the beginning of the pandemic, before we had vaccines or access to good masks.
This is just an anecdote: up until now, I have known several direct acquaintances who tested positive, but never more than one in any given week. In the last week, I know of six (including me). Only one of the tests will end up being reported to the state.
The case counts from Worldometers are really seeming pointless these days. I think the hospitalization numbers from Johns Hopkins give a better indication of where things stand.
The precise case counts are not particularly accurate, but they do plot out a curve over time that allows one to follow the rises and falls and note how steep they are. IMHO, that’s not nothing.
My wife worked in an office (first time back in a year) on Friday with someone who tested positive the next day. Fingers crossed.
Hospitalisation is probably the more critical measure, and easier to apply consistently.
Case counts mean different things and aren’t necessarily straightforward to compare when the disease management changes. Example in Australia which was going for effective total suppression - then every case counted and meant something, but now the let-it-rip strategy sees little emphasis on the count being more than a measure of how much rip has been let.
As of last week, 10% of one of my daughter’s school (class of ~500) was out with COVID, include a child who sits next to her and is considered a “close contact.” That was early last week. Luckily, she does not seem to have caught it (has been tested) and the rest of us are fine so far. They were not under a mandatory mask protocol at the time (but are now.) My other daughter (different school) gets tested every week – she was negative. I took a home test at some point, also negative.
I know a lot of people who either have it, or have a kid home with it, or a housemate, or…
It’s looking like January to me, when we also have an awful lot of covid.
I’ve given up looking at case counts. Hospitalization is a lagging indicator. I’m mostly looking at sewage numbers locally. They are rising. Although not nearly as high as in January, fwiw. But maybe this strain doesn’t shed as much in the GI tract. At any rate, I think the sewage numbers are directionally meaningful.
Wouldn’t help much around here; an awful lot of people are on private septic systems. I don’t know whether anybody’s testing sewage from any of the villages.
Unless people are moving on and off sewage systems, any local testing would likely be relevant. But if it’s just a lot of disjoint villages, it might not be worth anyone’s time to collect samples regularly.
Plus in some states there just aren’t a lot of sewers to collect samples from. Last time I looked it up less than 1/2 of homes in my state (NH) had connections to town sewers and water. Most people have septic tanks and wells.
There is an issue with comparing current and historical hospitalisation rates.
Imagine a situation where you had 500 people in ICU that test positive for Covid, 90% of which are due to Covid as a primary cause.
Then imagine having 1000 people in ICU that test positive for Covid with only 20% of them in there with Covid as the primary cause.
Is the situation worse now? Do the simple hospitalisation numbers tell us anything useful?
This is the situation in many countries right now.
Is anyone still interested in the Worldometer stats?
My state publishes both how many in the hospital have covid and how many of those are there primarily due to covid. And about half of the hospitalizations are primarily due to covid, not 20%. Perhaps things are different in the UK. And the ones in the ICU with covid are mostly there because of covid.
Also, my state’s estimate of the impact of covid is low, because a lot of diseases, such as diabetes, are aggravated by covid. So even though the primary complaint is diabetes, they might not need hospitalization if they didn’t also have covid. And i belief that’s a significant issue in the UK, as well as the US.
Things are different in the UK, but the point still stands. The basic number of hospitalisations is not necessarily a good indicator of the state of play in and of itself, other stratifying factors are needed.
You’ve done such a faithful job of carrying on the stat reporting! My (and everyone’s) hat is off to you. 
I would say, make it easy on yourself. Maybe include Worldometer stats weekly or at some other periodic interval that makes sense. Just one woman’s opinion.
I get the COVID email newsletter from the NYTimes that they were sending out every day for the past 2+ years. Even they’ve gone from daily to 3X per week.
We’ve moved into the Ongoing Relentless stage of this thing.
Yeah, it’s hardly breaking news anymore, is it?
I’ll try to remember to post Friday’s. Luckily I have a spreadsheet that does all the math for me.