As always, discount the last week's data, but the couple of weeks before that should be solid. This wave barely affected anyone under 75, and is waning even in that particularly exposed demographic.
The most recent week? The site boilerplate suggests that some data takes longer than a week to be received. Trends that appear in the 2d or 3d week in past appear to be pretty reliable.
True, yes, as you said. But we didn't have a new variant (that I know of) yet we did have a spike in the elderly crowd. I haven't heard an explanation yet. Neither a good one nor a bad one.
It would seem that the public health authorities have quietly decided that there aren't going to be any more "named" variants, after the multiple debacles of the last 18 months... so they are now tracking "sub-variants" with bland names like "BA.2.12.1". Which arrived in the US around March, and now accounts for about 60% of cases (the remaining 40% are other BA.2 sub-variants, which arrived in December and January).
Also noticeable how the news media simply doesn't report this anymore, isn't it? Hypothesis on why this is, is left as an exercise for the reader.
In the future, you should probably just get used to these surges-- variants will continue to arise, and when they hit a "pocket" of susceptible people, the disease will spread rapidly through that pocket and then burn out. Lather, rinse, repeat. The hospitalizations are mostly confined to the weakest people (i.e. the elderly, and younger people with serious co-morbidities) now. Vaccines and drug treatments reduce the risk of dying (by about 8x and 6x, respectively); but the initial risk for 85-year-olds was one in five, so this still leaves 3-4% of them being hospitalized and 0.3-0.4% dying.
I agree with Janet. There isn't always a clear explanation of surges and retreats. It can sometimes be a variant, but also sometimes a lumpy process of a virus encountering more or less resistance in pockets of population.
I posted the chart not to express a view about causation but to counter the press I keep reading about "SURGES IN CASES." Understanding whether there's really anything particularly dangerous going on is relevant to our response to proposals for extraordinary protective measures. If I were 75+ and suffering from any number of complicating health problems (from impaired immunity to respiratory challenges and so on), I'd probably be severely limiting my public contact. Otherwise, it's pretty much life as usual in a world where we'll never be free from the risk of contracting contagious disease.
Nice. Very nice. Do we know what drove the last blip?
ReplyDeleteThe most recent week? The site boilerplate suggests that some data takes longer than a week to be received. Trends that appear in the 2d or 3d week in past appear to be pretty reliable.
ReplyDeleteTrue, yes, as you said. But we didn't have a new variant (that I know of) yet we did have a spike in the elderly crowd. I haven't heard an explanation yet. Neither a good one nor a bad one.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem that the public health authorities have quietly decided that there aren't going to be any more "named" variants, after the multiple debacles of the last 18 months... so they are now tracking "sub-variants" with bland names like "BA.2.12.1". Which arrived in the US around March, and now accounts for about 60% of cases (the remaining 40% are other BA.2 sub-variants, which arrived in December and January).
ReplyDeleteAlso noticeable how the news media simply doesn't report this anymore, isn't it? Hypothesis on why this is, is left as an exercise for the reader.
In the future, you should probably just get used to these surges-- variants will continue to arise, and when they hit a "pocket" of susceptible people, the disease will spread rapidly through that pocket and then burn out. Lather, rinse, repeat. The hospitalizations are mostly confined to the weakest people (i.e. the elderly, and younger people with serious co-morbidities) now. Vaccines and drug treatments reduce the risk of dying (by about 8x and 6x, respectively); but the initial risk for 85-year-olds was one in five, so this still leaves 3-4% of them being hospitalized and 0.3-0.4% dying.
Janet
I agree with Janet. There isn't always a clear explanation of surges and retreats. It can sometimes be a variant, but also sometimes a lumpy process of a virus encountering more or less resistance in pockets of population.
ReplyDeleteI posted the chart not to express a view about causation but to counter the press I keep reading about "SURGES IN CASES." Understanding whether there's really anything particularly dangerous going on is relevant to our response to proposals for extraordinary protective measures. If I were 75+ and suffering from any number of complicating health problems (from impaired immunity to respiratory challenges and so on), I'd probably be severely limiting my public contact. Otherwise, it's pretty much life as usual in a world where we'll never be free from the risk of contracting contagious disease.
Janet's comment is quite insightful. Welcome, Janet.
ReplyDelete