We’re going through the eye of the storm

It may seem like good news that new Covid cases and new deaths were both substantially lower last week. Last year, they did the same thing at this time, and the rest of July was pretty good. That ended in August, as the delta variant started to kick in, and of course delta really ruined the fall, followed by omicron, which became dominant in December.

Then in January 2022 we literally recorded ten times as many cases as November (twice as many as December). The fact that these were omicron cases, not delta, and were therefore much less lethal, didn’t prevent deaths from doubling over November (and being 50% more than in December), simply because of the huge numbers of people that became infected.

Now, our problem is that omicron’s children – its subvariants – are busy as beavers, competing with each other and raising their transmissibility to new heights. You may have seen my post last Friday, based on the WaPo story about how the BA.5 variant was looking like the real winner, and pointing out that it cares very little for whether someone is vaccinated or has recently had Covid. In fact, I was just on a call with about 15 people, all of whom are vaccinated and boosted, I’m sure, yet three of them announced they’d just caught Covid.

But it turns out that BA.5 is yesterday’s news. There’s a newer BA.2.75 variant that came out of India (you remember them? The country where delta originated and almost certainly killed more than 2 million people? Do you remember all the bodies floating down the Ganges, because their families couldn’t afford the cost of wood to burn them, given the huge demand for wood?), which is more transmissible and cares even less about vaccination and previous infection.

Of course, if you’re vaccinated and boosted, you’re much less likely to die from either variant, if you’re hospitalized. In fact, during the January omicron wave, unvaccinated people were 25 times more likely to die of Covid than vaccinated people. Currently, only 67 percent of the US population is full vaccinated (I’m sure the percentage with two boosters is far lower than that), vs. 82% in Canada. So the unvaccinated people are sitting ducks for the coming subvariant wave.

But, hey…These people have made the decision that their freedom to choose non-vaccination is much more important than improving their chances of surviving Covid. You have to admire their resolve – all the way to the ventilators and toe tags.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, July 10.

Month

Deaths reported during month/year

Avg. deaths per day during month/year

Deaths as percentage of previous month/year

Month of March 2020

4,058

131

 

Month of April 2020

59,812

1,994

1,474%

Month of May 2020

42,327

1,365

71%

Month of June 2020

23,925

798

57%

Month of July 2020

26,649

860

111%

Month of August 2020

30,970

999

116%

Month of Sept. 2020

22,809

760

75%

Month of Oct. 2020

24,332

785

107%

Month of Nov. 2020

38,293

1,276

157%

Month of Dec. 2020

79,850

2,576

209%

Total 2020

354,215

1,154

 

Month of Jan. 2021

98,604

3,181

119%

Month of Feb. 2021

68,918

2,461

70%

Month of March 2021

37,945

1,224

55%

Month of April 2021

24,323

811

64%

Month of May 2021

19,843

661

82%

Month of June 2021

10,544

351

53%

Month of July 2021

8,833

287

84%

Month of August 2021

31,160

1,005

351%

Month of Sept. 2021

56,687

1,890

182%

Month of Oct. 2021

49,992

1,613

88%

Month of Nov. 2021

38,364

1,279

77%

Month of Dec. 2021

41,452

1,337

108%

Total 2021

492,756

1,350

158%

Month of Jan. 2022

65,855

2,124

159%

Month of Feb. 2022

63,451

2,266

96%

Month of March 2022

31,427

1,014

50%

Month of April 2022

13,297

443

42%

Month of May 2022

11,474

370

86%

Month of June 2022

11,109

370

97%

Total Pandemic so far

1,045,792

1,244

 

 I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,045,792

Average daily deaths last seven days: 258

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 434

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 90,338,657

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 559,937 (79,991/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 920,983 (131,569/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.6% (1.0% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

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