{"id":1282,"date":"2022-02-02T19:28:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T02:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2023-10-06T13:32:47","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T20:32:47","slug":"covidendemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/covidendemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Light at the end of the COVID tunnel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his very popular March 2020 blog post \u201cHammer and Dance<\/a>,\u201d Tom\u00e1s Pueyo made the convincing case for lockdown. He recently wrote a new blog post \u201cGame Over<\/a>\u201d arguing that we can now get back to normal life. He shows that with vaccinations, lower fatality of Omicron, and treatments like Plaxovid, the fatality of COVID is now 12.5x lower<\/u> than the flu. He does admit that we\u2019re seeing a peak of Omicron, hospitals are busy, and Plaxovid production is still ramping up, but that should only last another couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

This morning, a mother at my kids\u2019 school said she gets a weekly COVID test every Friday SF, and previously when there\u2019s been 1 hour+ line, this past Friday, she could just walk in. This is anecdotal, but perhaps an indicator that things may be calming, and an impetus to look at some current data\u2026<\/p>\n

Cases<\/h1>\n

The number of new cases are falling, as predicted to be end of Omicron cycle. Other variants and cycles are expected, but as COVID becomes endemic, these should be less severe and as probable as the flu or \u201ccommon cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

USA<\/h2>\n

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California<\/h2>\n

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Fatality Rates<\/h1>\n

Is it reasonable to expect to never get sick? Vaccinations do not necessarily prevent one from getting sick, but they lessen the severity and shorten the contagious cycle which reduces spread. Instead, we can to look at the fatality of COVID. Case fatality rates are at the lowest since the beginning of the pandemic and seem to be dropping (presumably as variant severity lessens, vaccinations increase, and treatments improve).<\/p>\n

USA<\/h2>\n

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(1 month moving average, linear scale)<\/p>\n

California<\/h2>\n

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Hospital Resources<\/h1>\n

In California, we may be over the hump (at least for this variant wave) for demand on hospital resources.<\/p>\n

California<\/h2>\n

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Look By County<\/h1>\n

USA and California trends seem to look promising. And San Francisco and San Mateo counties seem to be better than average within California.<\/p>\n

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More people are testing positive, but serious results seem to be declining.<\/p>\n

San Francisco<\/h2>\n

In San Francisco too, the number of positive cases is up and appears to have peaked. ICU bed availability is slowly improving.<\/p>\n

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San Mateo<\/h2>\n

San Mateo shows a similar possible peak in ICU positive patients, but ICU bed availability is still trending downward.<\/p>\n

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Caution seems prudent through at least middle of February until treatment supplies are up and hospital demand has calmed. Without some unforeseen circumstances (e.g., new resistant, deadly variant), perhaps we can start coming out of our shells. Obviously, those at higher risk need to exercise additional caution, as they did before the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1298,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions\/1298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}