That tiny uptick in cases is pretty irrelevant. The hospital admissions (due to covid) have dropped precipitously in the past 28 days, as has inpatient bed utilization. Those are the things that matter.
A similar small uptick in apparent transmission (based on wastewater tests) led UCSD to slam some restrictions back on, just after they’d been lifted. At this late date, transmission by itself is a pretty sorry reason to take steps like that.
The 4% uptick could just be random variation at a plateau or it could be the start of a significant increase. We’ll aee next week.
The number would have to quadruple to push us from Low to Medium.
It’s 4% of an already small number.
I read somewhere that the Covid infection numbers in NYC increased last week by ~40% (still starting from a small number but also worth keeping an eye on it as previous waves often started on the east coast)
7-day average of new cases is 13 per 100K, up 37% from two weeks ago. Which is hardly surprising given that they lifted most mask and proof of vaccination requirements on March 7.
Alameda County’s still looking good per the CDC.
| 2/24/22 | 3/3/22 | 3/10/22 | 03/17/22 | 03/24/22 | 03/31/22 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COVID Inpatient Bed Utilization | 8.0% | 5.6% | 4.5% | 3.1% | 2.5% | 2.2% |
| COVID Hospital Admissions per 100k | 9.1 | 7.4 | 6 | 4.1 | 3.8 | 3.1 |
| Cases per 100k | 106.02 | 279.24* | 60.07 | 47.93 | 49.92 | 50.14 |
| COVID-19 Community Level | Low | Medium* | Low | Low | Low | Low |
| *wrong |
The Nature authors show that Swedish government authorities denied or downplayed scientific findings about COVID that should have guided them to more reasoned and appropriate policies. These included scientific findings that infected but asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people could spread the virus, that it was airborne, that the virus was a greater health threat than the flu and that children were not immune.
BA.2 is basically identical to BA.1 except it spreads faster,.so it’s not a new surge, just a last hurrah of Omicron. I’m surprised we haven’t seen even higher numbers given how far restrictions have been relaxed.
“It’s not that diabetes itself makes Covid inherently worse but rather uncontrolled diabetes, which is really a proxy for other markers of disadvantage …”
Last week:
Today:
It’s strange.to me that people have so much trouble understanding that BA.2 is just a minor variation on BA.1.
From a genetic point it isn’t a minor variation (also the position of the new mutations) which also led to the assumption that BA2 could have a major impact in the US (in addition the low level of booster shots in the US made it even more likely)
I say it’s a minor variation because the only difference is that it spreads faster. It’s just the tail end of the Omicron wave.
Omicron was a major variation because it infected people who had had Delta or earlier variants, vaccines reduced chances of infection by only a third to half rather than close to 100% as for Delta and earlier, and it was orders of magnitude more infectious.
But that’s not how this is assessed- just because it is time wise close to BA1 doesn’t mean that the genetic changes can be quite significant (as is the case with BA2). In addition, we have seen Europe, e.g. Germany clearly two waves with a BA1 and a BA2 wave - the question is now why there is no BA2 wave in the US
Because Omicron had already almost burned itself out.
But did it happen in many countries in Europe and not in the US ?
I presume Omicron spread slower in some countries so there was a minor surge from BA.2 toward the end of the Omicron wave. I posted charts above showing clearly that that’s what happened in Denmark and that the UK had a decline similar to the US until they dropped all restrictions.
Why Germany is so different I have no idea.
Alameda County’s still in the green zone. 25% increase in cases per 100K this week, though that’s still well below the CDC’s threshold of 200.
| 2/24/22 | 3/3/22 | 3/10/22 | 03/17/22 | 03/24/22 | 03/31/22 | 04/07/22 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COVID Inpatient Bed Utilization | 8.0% | 5.6% | 4.5% | 3.1% | 2.5% | 2.2% | 1.7% |
| COVID Hospital Admissions per 100k | 9.1 | 7.4 | 6 | 4.1 | 3.8 | 3.1 | 2.3 |
| Cases per 100k | 106.02 | 279.24* | 60.07 | 47.93 | 49.92 | 50.14 | 59.83 |
| COVID-19 Community Level | Low | Medium* | Low | Low | Low | Low | Low |
| *wrong |
Answer to the NYT question, vis-a-vis the possibilities cited in their article:
All of the above. Reported cases are no longer a relevant metric, IMO.
What’s important is that hospital admissions and inpatient bed utilization are both continuing to steadily decline in the Alameda example.
