Althouse: "For the fourth day in a row, Wisconsin on Friday recorded a record-breaking number of new COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious but milder omicron variant."

January 8, 2022

"For the fourth day in a row, Wisconsin on Friday recorded a record-breaking number of new COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious but milder omicron variant."

"The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported 12,293 new confirmed cases, the highest single-day case count of the entire pandemic. The previous record was set Thursday when 11,547 new cases were reported.... Friday’s seven-day average was more than double what it was just two weeks ago, the health department said. At 7,637 cases, the average was also the highest of the pandemic. Deaths are lower than they were this time last year, with 12 new COVID-19 deaths reported Friday, according to the department. Last year, 32 new deaths were added on Jan. 7. But the seven-day average for COVID-19 deaths is comparable. Friday’s seven-day average was 20 deaths per day, the health department reported. Last year at this time that number was 22 deaths per day.... The number of ICU patients — 472 — was just shy of the pandemic all-time high of 475 reached on Thursday, according to the association."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

61 comments:

rcocean said...: So what? It doesn't matter how many cases. The only thing that matters in hospitalizations and deaths. Y'know how many cases of the flu you get every year? I think even libtards are getting tired (after 2 years!) of all the scaremongering.; 1/8/22, 9:41 AM
Achilles said...: Alternate Headline:

Everyone in Wisconsin is going to die if you don't switch to mail in voting and allow 24 hour ballot drop off boxes right behind Democrat headquarters.; 1/8/22, 9:48 AM
Paul said...: WHO CARES??? I'm in Texas... sure we have this Omicron around.. big deal. My nephew is sick now with it.. we visit. If we get sick, well will handle it (and we are both vaccinated.)

We are not afraid of basically the flu.

Schools are open.. all stores are open.. streets are busy.. we are back on the road down here.

The only way to stop from getting it is to .. hold your breath... like in forever.

All virus tend to mutate downward in deadliness (if not Ebola would have killed this planet long time ago.)

Grow up folks... the COVID is O..V..E..R. Get a life.; 1/8/22, 9:48 AM
Jaq said...: This only comes as surprising to those people unfamiliar with the right wing media; 1/8/22, 9:49 AM
rhhardin said...: ICU is probably delta, not omicron. Reports which don't distinguish them are not helpful. Absolute delta case numbers fall fast when omicron comes in, is its good side.; 1/8/22, 9:49 AM
Jaq said...: Viruses *tend* to mutate downward, but you don’t want to catch smallpox. This is more of a lucky break than a guaranteed result, but some thoughts are easily thunk, correct or not.; 1/8/22, 9:52 AM
rhhardin said...: Japan is having omicron panic, worried about keeping it out of the country, when it's the variant that will probably end covid.; 1/8/22, 9:53 AM
gilbar said...: is 20 the same as 22? is 110% 'comparable' to 100%
i suppose so! i suppose you can 'compare' Any two numbers. So 4 IS 'comparable' to 120*

120* one twenty is the current 7day rolling average for NY, 4 is the 7day average for FLA
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/; 1/8/22, 9:53 AM
Dave Begley said...: The Fake News continues with the deceptive and worthless case counts. The only thing that really matters is deaths and the age of the dec'd.; 1/8/22, 9:54 AM
rhhardin said...: The interesting omicron thing is that it has no chain of variants after the original covid wuhan version, as if somebody had engineered a virulent but harmless version to immunize people, in the lab. It apparently originated in (laboratory) mice.; 1/8/22, 9:55 AM
Omaha1 said...: What is the definition of COVID deaths? Considering the higher contagiousness of the Omicron variant, and testing everyone for COVID, probably almost all hospitalized patients test positive. That does not mean that they are dying from COVID. But real news is deliberately obscured, in order to keep everyone frightened.; 1/8/22, 9:57 AM
gilbar said...: OhmyGod is like a Headcold, people!!! a moderately bad Headcold!!
Do you WANT that? Do You WANT a moderately bad Headcold???
Of Course you Don't!! NO imposition is too extreme if it will keep you from getting a headcold!
(of course, the impositions WON'T keep you from getting it; but STILL!!!

words of Wisdom, from John Borell
1. We are all getting Omicron no matter what anyone does.
2. Get vaccinated so it isn’t bad when you inevitably get it.
3. Don’t worry about the unvaccinated. See No. 1.
4. Don’t worry about masks. See No. 1, again.
5. Go on about your normal, 2019 life. See No. 1 one more time.; 1/8/22, 9:58 AM
rhhardin said...: John Campbell youtube is the best I've found on omicron in a daily report.; 1/8/22, 10:02 AM
Ann Althouse said...: @rcocean

read the whole post and be ashamed that you got the first comment in this thread, presumably but skipping the part where you, you know, actually read it; 1/8/22, 10:03 AM
rhhardin said...: There's nothing wrong with the idea of laying low until delta mostly disappears.; 1/8/22, 10:03 AM
gilbar said...: maha1 said...
What is the definition of COVID deaths? Considering the higher contagiousness of the Omicron variant, and testing everyone for COVID, probably almost all hospitalized patients test positive.

Over half of COVID-19 hospitalizations in NYC were not due to COVID-19

a staggering 51% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York City were not due to COVID-19 or related symptoms. The numbers show that 3,060 patients were hospitalized for reasons other than COVID-19, while only 2,992 were admitted due to the illness.; 1/8/22, 10:04 AM
Maynard said...: Omicron is the vaccine we have been waiting for.

It's time to find a super spreader event to attend, folks.; 1/8/22, 10:04 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Smallpox is a double-stranded DNA virus, and mutates much more slowly than any single-strand RNA virus. Rapidly mutating viruses are poor targets for vaccines, and always have been.; 1/8/22, 10:05 AM
gilbar said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/8/22, 10:08 AM
Jaq said...: Maybe cooler heads prevailed among the writers of the simulation so they cooked up omicron and made sure that it was not named Xi.; 1/8/22, 10:09 AM
Owen said...: People who are moribund for reasons other than Wu Flu --heart failure, cancer, organ failure due to terminal obesity or alcoholism, chronic drug abuse, sheer old age-- those people NEVER go to the hospital on their last legs. Certainly in "normal times" people don't call 911 and rush Grandad into the ER and then the ICU if, for the last time, he is stroking out or suffering an MI. At age 95.

So we definitely know that all those people in the ICU's and morgues are totes due to Wu Flu. Couldn't be anything else.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That guy from the CDC, who almost two years ago redefined the protocol for reporting death "with" to vastly expand "death from."; 1/8/22, 10:10 AM
Jaq said...: It’s a poor target perhaps, but the vaccines got a lot of people to this part of the pandemic alive, in my humble opinion. It would be nice to live in an ideal world where if we were just smart enough, we would never have to make any compromises.; 1/8/22, 10:13 AM
lgv said...: It's almost as if the vaccine isn't working. What percentage of the hospitalized are vaccinated, or is it pandemic of the unvaccinated and almost all are unvaccinated?

As a reformed quant jockey, if 66% are fully vaccinated and 66% or more of positive cases are vaccinated, then the vaccine may not be the solution, but no one is asking the right questions.

Also never asked:

1) How many people have died within 72 hours of taking the vaccine? (hint - it is greater than zero as in all vaccines)
2) Pharma was released from liability, which makes sense for temporary emergency use, but once fully FDA approved why is Pfizer still protected?
3) Are there anylong term safety issues with taking 3 or 4 doses of the vaccine vs. the original two?

There are more, but we will never know.; 1/8/22, 10:21 AM
Omaha1 said...: I think your link is wrong, it does not go to the Wisconsin State Journal.; 1/8/22, 10:24 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Did the vaccines get people to this point, Tim? Or did the most vulnerable simply die in 2020 and early 2021? The one thing quite noticeable in the data is that the countries suffering the highest fatality rates from August to now are precisely those countries that suffered the lowest fatality rates from February 2020 until this past Spring- see Germany, for example, and compare it to the UK over the entire period of time- in 2020, it looked like Germany did much better, but then that changed this past Fall, even though both countries are similarly vaccinated. My impression is strongly this- everybody is going to end up in the same place eventually, with most of the difference accounted for by differences in co-morbitities and other natural demographic divergences. I suspect vaccination will be a minor component of the differences, not a major one.

For the US, I will just point out that our excess deaths continued to run at 40% in the late Summer and Fall despite the vaccines, and will likely be in the same range for the rest of the Fall (the data lags at the CDC by 2 months). In short, when we end up comparing 2020 to 2021, it is possible that excess deaths will be higher in 2021, not lower.; 1/8/22, 10:25 AM
Yancey Ward said...: And one final point- vaccines, especially these single protein targeted ones, work best at their primary biological process in people under the age of 50. Older people's immune response to the vaccines is going to be weaker to non-existent- it is one of the reasons respiratory diseases kill old people in the first place, vaccines or no vaccines. This probably explains why excess deaths haven't fallen very much in the last year.

In the end, the primary end-point for assessing the effectiveness of the vaccines is their overally effect on all-cause mortality. So far, that data suggests they aren't very good at all.; 1/8/22, 10:31 AM
rcocean said...: if you look at the Winsconsin health Department stats - you'll see that approximately 10,000 have died of CV-19 in almost 2 years. 7,500 - or 75% were over the age of 70. Only 14% were under the age of 60. How many of these old people had Co-morbitities isn't stated.

The 7-day moving average is almost 1/2 that of Nov-Dec 2020. Right now the total deaths per 7 day moving average is about 25 a day. 7-day moving average of new cases 7,600, deaths 21. This is a death rate of approximately 1 in 400.

By comparison: 20,000 people over 65 die in Winsconsin every year from Cancer and Heart Disease.; 1/8/22, 10:35 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Link fixed

sorry; 1/8/22, 10:36 AM
Milo Minderbinder said...: Omicron is the newest and best vaccine....

No one will escape getting Covid. The only question is how you will prepare your immune system and how you will obtain proven therapeutics.; 1/8/22, 10:36 AM
Bender said...: The folly of standing on the beach thinking you can hold back the tsunami with your hands.; 1/8/22, 10:44 AM
Achilles said...: gilbar said...

is 20 the same as 22? is 110% 'comparable' to 100%
i suppose so! i suppose you can 'compare' Any two numbers. So 4 IS 'comparable' to 120*

That is the first thing I noticed too.

The journalist is comparing to completely different statistics and believes that all numbers are the same.

Journalists are stupid people. Newspapers and TV news and all media are written by people who are below average in knowledge and intelligence.; 1/8/22, 10:54 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Panic porn from the AP: "Hospitalizations skyrocket in kids too young for COVID shots"
That's the headline. In the body of the article we have this from Walensky:

The worrisome trend in children too young to be vaccinated underscores the need for older kids and adults to get their shots to help protect those around them, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Getting vaxxed makes it less likely that you will be hospitalized or die from covid, but it does not prevent you from getting or spreading covid. We know this.

Since mid-December, with the highly contagious omicron variant spreading furiously around the country, the hospitalization rate in these youngest kids has surged to more than 4 in 100,000 children, up from 2.5 per 100,000.

The "skyrocketing" is an increase from 0.0025% to 0.004% of children under the age of five years.

These quotes need no comment:

At a briefing, Walensky said the numbers include children hospitalized because of COVID-19 and those admitted for other reasons but found to be infected.

The CDC also said the surge could be partially attributable to how COVID-19 hospitalizations in this age group are defined: a positive virus test within 14 days of hospitalization for any reason.

The severity of illness among children during the omicron wave seems lower than it was with the delta variant, said Seattle Children’s Hospital critical care chief Dr. John McGuire.

“Most of the COVID+ kids in the hospital are actually not here for COVID-19 disease,” McGuire said in an email. “They are here for other issues but happen to have tested positive.”

https://www.aol.com/news/hospitalizations-skyrocket-kids-too-young-163150525-220430194.html; 1/8/22, 11:17 AM
Browndog said...: Again, no matter where you sit on the covid scale-from never had it to dead as a door nail- The Science Covidians will always claim it proves it would have been worse without the "vaccine".; 1/8/22, 11:21 AM
Temujin said...: Not for nothing, but Steve Kirsch reports on Substack:

"On the Dec 24, 2021 release of the VAERS data, we passed an important milestone: over 1M adverse events reported in VAERS.
Oddly, the mainstream media didn’t cover this at all. I just can’t figure out why. In short, these vaccines have more adverse reactions than all vaccines combined in the 30 year history of VAERS (over 70 vaccines). They are the most deadly vaccines ever created and have likely killed over 150,000 Americans."

This is a topic- a serious topic- that continues to be kept underground, below the surface of mainstream news. Like many of you, I read online news from around the world daily. And on a daily basis, I read about some young to middle aged person dropping dead, recently vaccinated. I am not saying the vax is a killer, but it sure looks like...well...this vax can be a killer. Far more, by multiples, than any other vaccines we've used. Now, I've had my 2+1 vaccinations. I'm probably NOT going to get another. Three days after my booster, I had severe heart pains while walking fast. I wasn't even running- just walking fast. That was last October. Never had any issue prior, never had any issue since. (and yes- my cardiologist is on it with me, I've had all kinds of tests, and there's nothing there.) Could be coincidence, but I've seen enough, and read enough that I just don't feel that the entire story of these vaccines is known and/or being told. And I am not an 'anti-vaxxer'. I've had every vax you could have in one life.

But one thing I do know: Pfizer- which has a long history of criminal activity, is one of the players. Moderna and it's founders have their own stories as well. And both are making Billions of dollars on these mandated, take-them-as-often-as-you-can vaccines. This is a global golden goose. There's enough money that they can buy all of the official backing they need in every government on earth, and from every media hack with a mic or laptop.

I suppose this post is now dangerous to this blog. Ann...I apologize if this gets you in any trouble and feel free to eliminate this comment. But the fact that I even have to say any of that should make everyone look hard at what is going on.; 1/8/22, 11:42 AM
BG said...: Hubby and I had the J&J back in April. We both just recovered from a bout with COVID. We assume it was Omicron, according to our symptoms. (We did a home test - two bright and very BOLD pink lines.) We did not report this to the "authorities" since it was indeed, like a very bad cold/flu and no medical professionals were needed. Numbers, I'm sure, are higher because of people like us.; 1/8/22, 11:46 AM
Butkus51 said...: duck and cover; 1/8/22, 12:03 PM
MountainMan said...: My younger daughter and her family all had it last week. 4-yr old granddaughter got it first, getting sick on New Year's Eve. Her 7-year old brother was next, and he had already had one vax shot and was scheduled to get is 2nd end of last week. Son-in-law was next, then my daughter, and both of them were vaxxed and boosted. For all of them it was like a bad cold, the little 4-yr old was over it in a couple days, did not last long for the grandson either. SIL and daughter were the sickest. They are all fine now, I think.; 1/8/22, 12:05 PM
wildswan said...: The Milwaukee Medical Examiner's office has removed the data from its public data access screen. On this screen you used to be able to see how many people were dying of Covid and what their other conditions were. You could see that in Milwaukee throughout the pandemic, whatever the age, the majority of those dying had two or more co-morbidities, meaning a systemic disease such as diabetes, renal failure, pulmonary lung disease, heart disease and cancer. A smaller group had one co-morbidity. A very small group, composed of people over fifty, had no other cause of death except Covid. You could see that in every group except the healthy, vaccinated people were dying but that they composed a small section of the total group. Vaccination provides a degree of protection from Covid against serious illness and death, the amount of protection waning in relation to the extent of other systemic diseases, weight and age.
These facts are now gone, inaccessible. And this was the only site that had them.; 1/8/22, 12:09 PM
FullMoon said...: Peripheral teaches at private school. Six classrooms shut down so far because someone tested positive. Nobody has symptoms other than runny nose and cough.

People lined up for a block waiting to be tested.

Another works at Sutter Health, ironically founded in response to 1918 flu. Out of test kits, numerous employees positive with mild, and staying home. Flooded with patients afraid they may have virus.; 1/8/22, 12:17 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Just checked the CDC variant graph. They use a model for the latest two weeks, and are showing 95% rate right now, nationally, for Omicron, and 5% for delta. That was for 1/1/22. The last “hard” count (going back those two weeks) was 37.9% Omicron and 61.9% Delta for the week ending 12/18/21. They did have to revise their Omicron estimates down a bit a couple weeks ago, when the 12/18 or 12/25 “hard” counts came in low. We shall see (probably Monday) how well their model is predicting Omicron penetration. I should add that the speed that Omicron is apparently pushing out Delta, is similar to the speed that we saw with Delta pushing out the other variants through July last year - about a month to go from minimal to almost complete penetration.

While we are talking CDC numbers, over the last month or so (since Omicron started pushing out Delta), reported cases have essentially doubled, while deaths have held steady, suggesting a significantly lower CFR (Case Fatality Rate) for Omicron than for Delta. Part of the early September surge in cases, and mid September surge in deaths, may be a result of Delta pushing out all of the earlier variants. But this time the analysis may be a bit more complicated because so much of the population in this country is now vaccinated with vaccines that target the spikes in the original variants, and thus seemingly miss the spikes in the Omicron variants. I think that this is called something like vaccine escape. That is the ever present danger of leaky, non sterilizing vaccines, which is what we have right now for COVID-19.

My thought here is that one of the traits that are the original SARS-CoV-2 variants so deadly is how tightly they bind to human ACE2 receptors. The corresponding spike proteins were what was targeted with the vaccines. (The human specificity is one of the things that strongly suggested artificial origin of the virus). One suggestion has been that Omicron jumped to another species, then jumped back, which is why there are no intervening variants over a year and a half, but a lot of mutations. Not surprisingly, some of the mutations are in the spike - esp since a spike optimized for Human ACE2 receptors is probably going to be suboptimal in other species. What I think that I am saying here is that Omicron didn’t actually mutate to “escape” te vaccines, but, instead mutated to better adapt to other species, and those mutations just coincidentally changed the portion of spikes that had even targeted by the vaccines.

One final thought. Omicron is almost assuredly more infectious (R0), but one thing that might be augmenting it’s ability to push out Delta, is that we have a heavily vaccinated population, and those vaccines apparently work far better with Delta than with Omicron. That would logically help Omicron push out Delta, because Omicron can more easily infect people with vaccine induced immunities; 1/8/22, 12:33 PM
effinayright said...: tim in vermont said...
Viruses *tend* to mutate downward, but you don’t want to catch smallpox. This is more of a lucky break than a guaranteed result, but some thoughts are easily thunk, correct or not.
**************

Smallpox is completely eradicated, and has been so since the late-1970's, when the WHO hunted down and isolated the last person sick from the virus.

Smallpox does not exist outside human hosts, so it's gone---unless you want to include the secret labs the Russkies and we have that allegedly preserve samples.

There's no weaker smallpox variant to get.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7044193/; 1/8/22, 12:42 PM
Howard said...: Snowshoeing with my doctor friends this morning. While Covid infections are off the charts, the local ICUs are not impacted. Most people in the hospital with Covid are being treated for something else and tested positive after admission.; 1/8/22, 12:43 PM
Jupiter said...: It's flu.; 1/8/22, 12:44 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “The interesting omicron thing is that it has no chain of variants after the original covid wuhan version, as if somebody had engineered a virulent but harmless version to immunize people, in the lab. It apparently originated in (laboratory) mice.”

Maybe. I don’t think that we know. But I think it likely that a non-humanized non-human animal was involved at some point as an intermediate host.

Note, BTW, jumping species is something that respiratory viruses like this one easily do. And ten they often come back to humans in a mutated form. That’s what happens with influenza viruses, which circulate in other host animal populations for awhile, undergoing mutations. Then they jump back to humans. It is the species that we spend the most time around that are the biggest dangers, and, in particular, where the animals live in large populations - most notably for us, pigs and poultry. That is why most of the various flus that we see are either swine or avian. They live in large, human controlled, populations, that form large animal reservoirs for these evolving flu variants.; 1/8/22, 12:48 PM
Michael said...: 25 year old son tested positive and was tired for four days. Never stopped working from home. Was he an unreported “case”? Must be lots more like him. He didn’t go to a doctor but one wonders about the numbers who test positive, feel pretty good, but rush to their doc with test in hand. Omicron is asshole.; 1/8/22, 12:49 PM
LA_Bob said...: Maynard said, "Omicron is the vaccine we have been waiting for."

Indeed.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/is-omicron-mild; 1/8/22, 12:59 PM
Roger Sweeny said...: If 50% of unvaccinated people get COVID and 50% of vaccinated people also get COVID, but the vaccinated people have mild symptoms and the unvaccinated people get pretty sick (and some of them die), I would not call the vaccine a failure.

Not at all.; 1/8/22, 1:03 PM
John henry said...: Some of us have been complaining for almost 2 years about lumping people wh die with kung flu and people who die of kung flu. Some of us were complaining about this with hiv/aids in the 90s but that's another issue.

In recent weeks this idea seems to be taking hold. I've seen perhaps a dozen instances but here's 2 from Fauci NY state governor.

"The other important thing is that if you look at the children are hospitalized many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID," Fauci added.

https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-children-hospital-covid-omicron-1664676

New York state hospitals will have to start reporting the numbers of patients being treated for symptoms of COVID-19 separately from those who test positive after being admitted for other reasons, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/03/hochul-orders-clearer-accounting-of-covid-cases-in-hospitals/

John LGBTQBNY Henry; 1/8/22, 1:20 PM
John henry said...: As you requested Ann, I went back and reread the article after you corrected the link.

I don't know what rcocean was commenting on since you sent him to the wrong link.

But had he been commenting on the journal article, I agree with him completely.

John LGBTQBNY Henry; 1/8/22, 1:23 PM
John henry said...: The article is rather dry on testing. The number of "cases" is really a lie since they really mean the number of positive test results.

As Dr Fauci himself said last week "Covid is the first disease where we count cases based on test results rather than clinical diagnosis.

Under current practice, with everyone positive being a case more tests = more cases.

We need to know the percentage of tests that come back positive. Anything else, like how many total positives there were is utter bullshit.

Also how is testing done? Last year, when pcr testing "the gold standard!" was still legal there were reports that tests for vaccinated people were run at fewer cycles than for vaccinated people. That will skew positive and negative results

Now that we are using different testing methods, does that change the data? Hopefully no but I've not seen it discussed.

I read your article, Ann. Twice, to avoid chastisement. It is a crock of shit.

No outright lies perhaps but a lot of half Truth's and conflations.

John LGBTQBNY Henry; 1/8/22, 1:37 PM
John henry said...: Bruce Hayden said...

Just checked the CDC variant graph. They use a model for the latest two weeks, and are showing 95% rate right now, nationally, for Omicron, and 5% for delta.

Is that based on specific tests for omicron (and delta) which I understand can only be done in a few labs or is it based on modeling/estimates/guessing/promoting the narrative?

John LGBTQBNY Henry; 1/8/22, 1:49 PM
Fritz said...: Maryland is also experiencing a huge spike in cases, and a slight increase in deaths and hospitalizations.

Just after Christmas, our live-at-home daughter-in-law heard that a co-worker had just tested +, developed a scratchy throat and a runny nose, and then tested positive on a home test I had purchased before the run on the market. The next day my son and I tested +, and my wife and the granddaughter had the sniffles too, and are presumed to have had it. All except the baby were fully vaccinated and boosted. All relatively mild cases that could easily be confused with head colds, no fevers. and getting better. We presume it was Omicron.

Daughter-in-law tested negative yesterday. I'm waiting until Monday to retest for a date with the eye doctor on Thursday.; 1/8/22, 2:21 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Bruce Hayden:

Just checked the CDC variant graph. They use a model for the latest two weeks, and are showing 95% rate right now, nationally, for Omicron, and 5% for delta. That was for 1/1/22. The last “hard” count (going back those two weeks) was 37.9% Omicron and 61.9% Delta for the week ending 12/18/21. They did have to revise their Omicron estimates down a bit a couple weeks ago, when the 12/18 or 12/25 “hard” counts came in low.

Has the CDC provided a clear explanation of how they initially reported 73% prevalence of omicron in mid-December, then corrected that to 23% shortly after? After they "corrected" their nonsense figures on vaccination rates (e.g. 99.9% vaccination among 65+) by hard capping at 95%, I have a renewed mistrust of the CDC's numbers. I don't think there's a conspiracy or anything -- I just think their working level staff are incompetent.

Are there non-CDC sources that are doing variant surveillance? Seems like researchers at universities and out in industry could be doing it, unless the CDC and the FDA are out there trying to block them again.

Re: Yancey Ward:

For the US, I will just point out that our excess deaths continued to run at 40% in the late Summer and Fall despite the vaccines, and will likely be in the same range for the rest of the Fall (the data lags at the CDC by 2 months).

Could you give the numbers? Summer doesn't surprise me all that much, but unless the statistics on hospitalization and death for the vaccinated vs unvaccinated elderly are way off, I don't see how the numbers could work out. On the other hand, I've been thinking since Summer 2020 that New York City, after comprehensively fucking up their initial response to coronavirus in February-April, would at least be spared subsequent waves thanks to the highest levels of natural immunity in the country (as shown by antibody tests that were being carried out around then). And then they got slammed just like everyone else during the 2020-2021 winter wave. So there may just still be enough people with neither natural nor vaccine protection for the virus to rack up similar numbers of cases and deaths.; 1/8/22, 2:28 PM
gilbar said...: Roger Sweeny said...

If 50% of unvaccinated people get COVID and 50% of vaccinated people also get COVID, but the vaccinated people have mild symptoms and the unvaccinated people get pretty sick (and some of them die), I would not call the vaccine a failure.

okay, i'll play!
If 50% of unvaccinated people get COVID and 50% of vaccinated people also get COVID, but the vaccinated people have mild symptoms and the unvaccinated people get mild symptoms too... What would you call it then? (since THIS is the real reality); 1/8/22, 2:46 PM
rcocean said...: People keep skipping over who gets CV-19. People keep focusing on the wrong things. Why should the under 50 be vaccinated and have their lives ruined by a lockdown because people OVER 70 are dying? Why can't we just protect the old people?

And how many of those dying under 60 have co-morbidities? Maybe instead of locking everything down we should take care of those who are Morbidly Obese or have breathing issues, etc.

Instead its "Lets vaccinate EVERYONE including little Kids". Lets vaccinate even if the new variants make the vaccines ineffective. Lets not think. Lets run in circles and scream and shout.

Has anyone noticed that the Scandivanians (incredibly) did NOT lock everything down, let CV19 run its course are now doing A-0K. And that the Brits who went insane, are still suffering? where's the analysis? where the debate?; 1/8/22, 3:20 PM
Roger Sweeny said...: @gilbar - okay, i'll play!
If 50% of unvaccinated people get COVID and 50% of vaccinated people also get COVID, but the vaccinated people have mild symptoms and the unvaccinated people get mild symptoms too... What would you call it then? (since THIS is the real reality)

In that case, it's a wash. But as far as I can tell, even with omicron, the unvaccinated still get it worse than the vaccinated. Though it's still early, so I wouldn't bet my life savings on it; 1/8/22, 5:21 PM
Roger Sweeny said...: @gilbar - okay, i'll play!
If 50% of unvaccinated people get COVID and 50% of vaccinated people also get COVID, but the vaccinated people have mild symptoms and the unvaccinated people get mild symptoms too... What would you call it then? (since THIS is the real reality)

In that case, it's a wash. But as far as I can tell, even with omicron, the unvaccinated still get it worse than the vaccinated. Though it's still early, so I wouldn't bet my life savings on it.; 1/8/22, 5:22 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Balfegor, you can find the excess death numbers here. Table 1 is the one you are looking for halfway down the page- its default will be the weekly view going back to January 2020 and continuing through to last week. After the week of August 21st 2021 (36%), excess deaths were above 40% until September 25th 2021, but I follow these numbers every day- every week in 2021 still gets changing numbers as deaths are added to past weeks. At the rate the numbers are changing, I am pretty certain that every week through the end of October will eventually end up with 40% excess deaths, and most like every week through the end of the year given that new COVID deaths are at a steady plateau since then. Additionally, excess deaths for the year of 2020 were 19%, and 2021, still not fully accounted for, is at 16% for the year and is, in my opinion, certain to be over 20% by March given how the numbers change week to week.; 1/8/22, 5:35 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Yancey Ward:

Thanks! I see what you are noting there.; 1/8/22, 7:08 PM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: Mostly pictures in the article. Was this written for the Second Grade reading level?

Missing:
..plot against time of
....tests administered
......because of symptoms
........positive result
......other reasons
........positive result
....cases
......"case" event initiated by testing
......"case" event initiated by symptoms
....hospital admissions
....ICU admissions
....deaths due to covid
......in hospital
......other
....deaths with covid
......in hospital
......other
..any change in definition of above categories during 01/01/2020 to present.

Is there a financial incentive for hospitals to put patients in ICU? (Whatever is subsidized is usually produced and delivered above need.); 1/8/22, 7:20 PM
Paul said...: "driven by the highly contagious but milder omicron variant."

And that says it all. It is far less deadly than the flu... so why the shit-in-our-pants mandates???

The PANDEMIC is OVER!!!! O.. V.. E.. R..

Get up and a life folks.; 1/8/22, 9:12 PM