Coronavirus dashboard for January 11: good news and bad news
Coronavirus dashboard for January 11: good news and bad news
With no new economic releases today, let me give you a brief update on the fast-moving Omicron wave.
First, the good news: as I pointed out yesterday, several States that were hit hardest first by Omicron look like they are hitting or have already hit peak:
This is an increase from just several days ago. In fact, right now the only early hit State that has not peaked is Hawaii (not shown).
Several other countries that were hit hard early by Omicron also appear to have peaked: the UK and Portugal, in addition to South Africa, where the strain was identified first:”
If the Omicron wave peaks in 30 to 45 days after onset, then the US as a whole is likely to peak between this coming weekend and the end of this month.
That’s the good news.
The question becomes, what happens next?
I have been hopeful that between vaccinations and prior infections, we would reach a point where any subsequent wave would be much less in severity. The State that has been the best candidate for a bellwether of this hypothesis is Rhode Island, which has both a very high vaccination rate (1st graph below), and a very high rate of previous infections (2nd graph below).
Despite the fact that over 75% of Rhode Island’s population was fully vaccinated, and perhaps 40% or more of its population having been infected even before December, Omicron hit it hard, with over 8% of the entire State’s population having *confirmed* infections in the last 45 days. That in itself is not such a big deal. Portugal, with 90% of its population fully vaccinated, also got hit hard by Omicron infections.
The problem is the next graph, which shows deaths:
Rhode Island has had a higher death rate in the past month than the US as a whole, or any Census Region. In fact, it is in the top 10 States for rate of deaths at the moment.
I should point out this has not been true of Portugal, which has not had any increase in deaths at all during the Omicron wave – at least not so far:
But if prior infections do not build up appreciable resistance to reinfection, at least over the medium term, then with about 1/4 or more of its population dead set against being vaccinated, the US is in some real long term trouble.
Can you get infected with Omicron if you previously had COVID?
Boston Globe – Jan 12
All signs point to yes
public health experts warn that people should not let their guard down even if they have had COVID during an earlier stage of the pandemic. …
what does “not let their guard down” mean?
[does it mean “do what they should have done in January 2020?” it’s too late.]
(Many interesting links in this article, which won’t post.)
(Globe article, from the beginning, without links.)
The Globe article continues with the section posted above, and concludes…)
in re: Can you get infected with Omicron if you previously had COVID?
the plural of anecdote is not data, but…
you all probably know this by now (from yesterday)
that means new cases are accelerating, not slowing down…& that in turn means this problem will only get worse:
Hospitals Are in Serious Trouble – Much of what’s wrong happens invisibly. At first, there’s just a lot of waiting. Emergency rooms get so full that “you’ll wait hours and hours, and you may not be able to get surgery when you need it,” When patients are seen, they might not get the tests they need, because technicians or necessary chemicals are in short supply. Then delay becomes absence. The little acts of compassion that make hospital stays tolerable disappear. Next go the acts of necessity that make stays survivable. Nurses might be so swamped that they can’t check whether a patient has their pain medications or if a ventilator is working correctly. People who would’ve been fine will get sicker. Eventually, people who would have lived will die. This is not conjecture; it is happening now, across the United States. “It’s not a dramatic Armageddon; it happens inch by inch,”
In this surge, COVID-19 hospitalizations rose slowly at first, from about 40,000 nationally in early November to 65,000 on Christmas. But with the super-transmissible Delta variant joined by the even-more-transmissible Omicron, the hospitalization count has shot up to 110,000 in the two weeks since then. “The volume of people presenting to our emergency rooms is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Kit Delgado, an emergency physician in Pennsylvania, told me. Health-care workers in 11 different states echoed what he said: Already, this surge is pushing their hospitals to the edge. And this is just the beginning. Hospitalizations always lag behind cases by about two weeks, so we’re only starting to see the effects of daily case counts that have tripled in the past 14 days (and are almost certainly underestimates). By the end of the month, according to the CDC’s forecasts, COVID will be sending at least 24,700 and up to 53,700 Americans to the hospital every single day. Omicron is so contagious that it is still flooding hospitals with sick people. And America’s continued inability to control the coronavirus has deflated its health-care system, which can no longer offer the same number of patients the same level of care.
Health-care workers have quit their jobs in droves; of those who have stayed, many now can’t work, because they have Omicron breakthrough infections. “In the last two years, I’ve never known as many colleagues who have COVID as I do now,” Amanda Bettencourt, the president-elect of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, told me. “The staffing crisis is the worst it has been through the pandemic.” This is why any comparisons between past and present hospitalization numbers are misleading: January 2021’s numbers would crush January 2022’s system because the workforce has been so diminished. Some institutions are now being overwhelmed by a fraction of their earlier patient loads. “I hope no one you know or love gets COVID or needs an emergency room right now, because there’s no room,” Janelle Thomas, an ICU nurse in Maryland, told me.
Here, then, is the most important difference about this surge: It comes on the back of all the prior ones. COVID’s burden is additive. It isn’t reflected just in the number of occupied hospital beds, but also in the faltering resolve and thinning ranks of the people who attend those beds. “This just feels like one wave too many,” Ranney said. The health-care system will continue to pay these costs long after COVID hospitalizations fall. Health-care workers will know, but most other people will be oblivious—until they need medical care and can’t get it.
Is Omicron Peaking?
NY Times – Jan 13
In parts of the Northeast, it seems to be.
A covid graph published in the Boston Globe seems to indicate a dip starting Jan 1 (from a very large spike): ‘7-day average of new confirmed cases’
Ohio’s 7 day new case total is down 2% from the prior week, but still double last January’s peak, so we have a ways to go..