It Is Getting Worse
The projections are not very accurate any more.
To all the idiots out there who think that two years has been enough suffering and it is now time to live again. That is not only infantile behaviour, you are directly responsible for pushing up the numbers and for making life miserable for those who cannot easily protect themselves.
In the State of Washington, every day over 6000 of your fellow citizens are coming down with Covid, while 270 of them will soon suffer for weeks if not months from the effects of Post-Covid Symptoms (see Remarks below). For those Post-Covid sufferers who have not previously masked and taken precautions, I could not care less about. But for those of you who did everything possible to protect yourselves and got it anyway, because the non-maskers are just everywhere, you got my deepest sympathy.
This said, numbers remain high or climb or oscillate at too high levels.
The good: Numbers are too low to overwhelm health care systems (but USA and Tunisia could get there).
The bad: Numbers are high enough to disrupt daily work.
The airline industry is a good example. They have laid off some of their good people during the lockdown years and they are now having a hard time finding new personnel while existing personnel is sick with Covid. As a result, thousands of flights are being cancelled. Which is actually good because every unmasked person less flying is one person less who can disseminate the virus.
| Daily Incidence | Daily ITU | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | Cumulative Excess Death | Death Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 30.2 ↘︎ | 0.9 ↗︎ | 0.106 → | 21.1% ↑ | 15.4% | ↘︎ |
| WA State | 34.3 → | 0.9 → | 0.144 ↗︎ | 17.3% ↗︎ | 11.4% | ↘︎ |
| Britain | 25.5 ↑ | 0.3 | 0.082 → | 03.3% | 12.5% | ↓ |
| France | 92.5 ↑ | 1.2 ↘︎ | 0.059 ↘︎ | 20.0% ↑ | 11.8% | ↘︎ |
| Germany | 97.3 ↑ | 0.9 ↗︎ | 0.096 ↗︎ | 51.3% ↑ | 07.3% | ↓ |
| Tunisia | 02.7 ↑ | 0.2 | 0.013 ↗︎ | 21.8% ↑ | 17.0% | ↗︎ |
Long Covid disease should better be called Post-Covid Symptoms because it is a mix of symptoms that can arise independently of a prior Coronavirus infection and these symptoms are very dissimilar to those of Covid-19. What we know about Post-Covid Symptoms is based on infections with the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We secretly hoped that the Omicron variant would cause fewer such long-term effects and if so, potentially of less severe nature.
Our hoping might have been wrong.
A case-control observational study (The Lancet) compared self-reported symptom data from 56 003 UK adults who were first infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the omicron (BA.1) wave and 41 361 UK adults who were initially infected during the delta period. The self-reporting is the weak point in the study, the number of participants is sufficient for significance of the results.
Among the Delta cases, 10.8% experienced Post-Covid Symptoms. This number fell to 4.5% for the Omicron cases. Which looks pretty good, no?
But considering that Omicron infects a lot more people than Delta did, the actual number of people reporting Post-Covid Symptoms after an Omicron infection is far larger as during Delta.
It is thus important that we to support them at work, at home and within the local health services.
