A COVID compendium

I had hoped I wouldn't ever feel I should assemble another post like this. But fear and a sort of ghoulish obsession have me continuing to collect pandemic oddments. It's grim out there.

Grim globally:

COVID has killed more than 5 million people around the world, according to the WHO. The real number is probably substantially higher.

That number is still rising—more than 46,000 people died of COVID in the last seven days alone.

The U.S. is driving a huge portion of those statistics. We have about 4.25 percent of the world’s population but account for more than 18 percent of total cases and almost 15 percent of total deaths. The Bulwark

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Grim nationally:

The U.S. record for daily coronavirus cases is broken as the Omicron and Delta variants disrupt the end of 2021. As a third year of the pandemic loomed, the seven-day average of U.S. cases topped 267,000 on Tuesday. ... The previous U.S. daily cases record was set on Jan. 11, 2021, when the seven-day average was 251,232. New York Times, 12-28-2021

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Grim locally:

Most remarkable stat is our asymptomatic test positivity rate (ATPR) @UCSFHospitals – now ~7%, or ~1-in-14. You'll recall that ATPR is fraction of patients getting care (hospitalization, procedure) @UCSFHospitals who we test for Covid routinely, even tho they have no symptoms. I use this as a rough approximation of the prevalence of Covid in Bay Area people who have no Covid symptoms.

The ATPR was as low as 1/500 (0.2%) a few months ago. Today, our 7 day ATPR is 6.9%, and last 3 days it's ~8% (going up fast). If its 8%, it means 1-in-12 people in SF who feel fine would test positive for Covid. (Not all would be in their infectious period, but most would be.)

So even in highly vaxxed, still mask-y SF, we're beginning to see a tsunami of cases, mostly breakthroughs (expected, since >80% of people vaxxed). Twitter thread from Dr. Bob Wachter, Chair of Medicine

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Old people have it bad. 

Click to enlarge

Since the pandemic began, 32 states have seen 1 percent of their population age 65 and over die of covid. These are estimates, overlaying data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated through the week of Dec. 11, on The Washington Post’s state-level data and then compared with Census Bureau figures on population by age. But in many states it’s not really very close. In Mississippi, for example, about 15 out of every 1,000 residents age 65 and older has died of the coronavirus — just under 1.5 percent. Phillip Bump, Washington Post

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Kidney patients have it far worse.

In the three decades before the pandemic, the number of Americans with end-stage renal disease had more than quadrupled, from about 180,000 in 1990 to about 810,000 in 2019, according to the United States Renal Data System, a national data registry. About 70% of these patients relied on dialysis in 2019; the other 30% received kidney transplants.

Then COVID-19 struck. Nearly 18,000 more dialysis patients died in 2020 than would have been expected based on previous years. That staggering toll represents an increase of nearly 20% from 2019, when more than 96,000 patients on dialysis died, according to federal data released this month.

The loss led to an unprecedented outcome: The nation’s dialysis population shrank, the first decline since the U.S. began keeping detailed numbers nearly a half century ago.

They were COVID-19’s perfect victims. ProPublica

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And Republican pols do their best to kill off their supporters

At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who’ve lost jobs over vaccine mandates — and a smattering of others may soon follow.

Workers who quit or are fired for cause — including for defying company policy — are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won’t submit to the multi-shot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Missouri. Washington Post, 12-21-2021

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In case you are still reading, What A ‘Mild-To-Moderate’ Omicron Case Feels Like. Happy New Year!