CDC estimates 140 million Americans have had COVID, about double case reports

About 37 million infected in omicron wave, and 58% of kids were infected at some point.

Read the whole story

 

[jdale]

Lower than I expected. Omicron, especially, was the one that everyone was going to catch, but in fact only about 11-12% of Americans caught it, according to this data. (A little higher than that, because it tailed into February, but that would be the bulk of it.)

 

[jdale]

The sad part is there is pretty much no reason for most of those cases to have ever occurred, except for the war on public health. I hate to think of what the long term costs of this are to society.

The sad part really is that people actually believe that.

This was never controllable... long term. That is known fact by every expert. What do people think they meant when they said flatten the curve ? The public health measures where about slowing the spread through the general population... not ending it. Anyone that thought that was incorrect Public figures that said it measures where about ending covid where lying or they where stupid.

People seem to forget that humans have only ever eradicated two viruses. One of which wasn't a human virus... and we it doesn't really count cause we can't cull humans.

Washington state: 30.9% infected
Oregon: 28.2%
Vermont: 17.8%
Massachusetts: 36.5%
Connecticut: 38.9%

Texas: 52.8%
Georgia: 49.5%
Mississippi: 51.8%
South Dakota: 49.8%

Tell me again how public health policies made no difference to how many people got sick.

 

[jdale]

Back of the napkin calculations on US Covid deaths.

US Population
329,500,000

US Covid Deaths
949,000

US Population who had Covid
140,000,000

% of death for someone who has had covid
0.68%

chance of death for someone who has had covid
1 in 148

% of death for US popuplation
0.29%

chance of death for US population
1 in 347

Road deaths in US per year (average)
37,323

Years of Pandemic
2

Road deaths during pandemic
74,646

% chance of death from cars
0.05%

Chance of death from cars
1 in 1876

Calculations with citations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

The infection fatality rate (of 0.68%) is higher than expected. Earlier in the pandemic it seemed like that was around 0.6%. But omicron was supposed to be less lethal, and vaccination should have brought it down. Seems like we over-estimated the number of undetected infections, but that means we also underestimated the lethality.

 

[jdale]

43% have had covid, 65% have been vaccinated, which means that some percentage has some measure of resistance to serious infection. And that is all I can say. You can't just add both figures and have it equal "herd immunity"

The CDC actually answers that question (with caveats), because they measured it directly.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracke ... prevalence has the graph of "combined seroprevalence" which shows that 94.7% of the population had some kind of antibodies (either from infections or vaccination or both) as of Dec 11, 2021 (unfortunately this graph stops there and does not extend into February). Even though the infection-induced seroprevalence at that time was only 28.8%.

That said, that particular study only looked at the blood of blood donors. It's possible they are not representative. Although the percentage vaccinated is about right.

Edit: on that last point, their paper says:

Fourth, vaccine-induced seroprevalence might be higher in blood donors than in the general population. For May 2021, among donations from donors with a known vaccine history, 73.3% were from donors who self-reported receiving a previous COVID-19 vaccine, compared with CDC estimates that 57.0% of US adults aged 18 years and older had received 1 dose or more of vaccine by May 2021.37 Blood donors are more likely than the general US population to be employed and have attended college,38 factors potentially associated with increased rates of vaccination and lower rates of infection.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/f ... le/2784013

So maybe I was too optimistic in saying "about right."

 

[jdale]

Lower than I expected. Omicron, especially, was the one that everyone was going to catch, but in fact only about 11-12% of Americans caught it, according to this data. (A little higher than that, because it tailed into February, but that would be the bulk of it.)

The data is *highly* suspect, as the US is not doing anywhere near enough testing to have any idea what the real numbers are.

I have a couple of friends who happen to be in jobs where they ARE routinely tested, and tested positive with no to super mild (typical mild cold level) symptoms. How many people who had similar simply never got tested? I have had at least two occasions in the past months where I had "cold-like" symptoms worse than those my friends had, but I didn't bother to get tested because I wasn't going anywhere (and getting tested is a pain in the ass where I am). I just stayed home for a week each time. So was it just a cold, or was it Covid? With such mild symptoms, does it matter? I'm triple vaccinated.

That's the point of these studies. They completely bypass those issues by getting samples that have nothing to do with covid-19 testing. These samples are from blood donors, not for people going for covid testing.

If there is a bias here, it's because blood donors are (apparently) somewhat more likely to get vaccinated and perhaps less likely to get infected, but it's not clear why the latter would be the case.

 

[jdale]

The sad part is there is pretty much no reason for most of those cases to have ever occurred, except for the war on public health. I hate to think of what the long term costs of this are to society.

Damn right it's a war on public health. BTW. I'm one of the ones who didn't get it either. I didn't screw around and take stupid chances.

You seem to be implying that in order to catch it one needed to screw around and take chances, which is not fair to many who caught it. My step dad was bedridden and caught it because a workman wasn't careful - but the work was necessary for his health and well-being. I was exposed to my step dad before we knew he caught it because I went to help out with his care. Even though I was exposed for a couple of days with him, it appears the vaccine worked for me and I had no symptoms (but I did quarantine anyway)..

Just a reminder that this virus is complex and it's not just careful people on one side and irresponsible people on the other..

Earlier, someone posted infection statistics from states that took it seriously and others that didn’t. So mask wearing , social distancing, minimizing any outside of the home trips vs exactly the opposite of that. Guess which ones had higher infection rates, and thus hospitalized or dead people? So yes, people in positions of not taking it so seriously statistically got it more often. We can chalk that up directly to other people not being careful, which is how your stepdad contracted it—someone didn’t do everything within their power to keep it at arms length. Would be interested in how many nurses and doctors were able to avoid it, using proper equipment and techniques.

Just a little while ago, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds delivered the GOP rebuttal to Biden's state of the union.

"Republican governors faced the same Covid-19 virus head on," Reynolds said. "But we honored your freedoms."

"That's why Iowa was the first state in the nation to require that schools open their doors. I was attacked by the left; I was attacked by the media. But it wasn't a hard choice. It was the right choice," she said.

"We're getting people back to work, not paying them to stay home. Most of all, we're respecting your freedom," Reynolds said later in the speech. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/01/joe-bid ... dates.html

No one should be surprised to hear that 54.4% of Iowans got infected. That's even more than Texas at 52.8%. It's above the US average of 43.3%. And it's way above Washington (30.9%), Oregon (28.2%), Massachusetts (36.5%), Connecticut (38.9%), or especially Vermont (17.8%).


Bottom line, GOP leadership makes people sick (and many of them die from it).

 

[jdale]

The sad part is there is pretty much no reason for most of those cases to have ever occurred, except for the war on public health. I hate to think of what the long term costs of this are to society.

Damn right it's a war on public health. BTW. I'm one of the ones who didn't get it either. I didn't screw around and take stupid chances.

You seem to be implying that in order to catch it one needed to screw around and take chances, which is not fair to many who caught it. My step dad was bedridden and caught it because a workman wasn't careful - but the work was necessary for his health and well-being. I was exposed to my step dad before we knew he caught it because I went to help out with his care. Even though I was exposed for a couple of days with him, it appears the vaccine worked for me and I had no symptoms (but I did quarantine anyway)..

Just a reminder that this virus is complex and it's not just careful people on one side and irresponsible people on the other..

Earlier, someone posted infection statistics from states that took it seriously and others that didn’t. So mask wearing , social distancing, minimizing any outside of the home trips vs exactly the opposite of that. Guess which ones had higher infection rates, and thus hospitalized or dead people? So yes, people in positions of not taking it so seriously statistically got it more often. We can chalk that up directly to other people not being careful, which is how your stepdad contracted it—someone didn’t do everything within their power to keep it at arms length. Would be interested in how many nurses and doctors were able to avoid it, using proper equipment and techniques.

Except that those states were carefully chosen to illustrate a point.
If you choose states at random to compare you will not really find a clear pattern based on public health mandates. California and Florida for example have almost the same infection rate despite adopting pretty much the opposite public health approach.

and

Curious, where is California versus Florida? Cherry-picking the data, are you?

It's not a completely clean comparison for sure. But look: there's no state in the South under 40%, and many are over 50%. Aside from Virginia, which has two Democratic senators.

The only state in New England over 40% is Rhode Island (at 44.6%). Two states are under 30%.

The worst coastal liberal states are California (41.3%), Rhode Island (44.6%), and New York (49.1%). All below 50%.

Above 50% we've got Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio.


I'd like to see a graph of infections vs political affiliation but it's pretty clear there is a real pattern here even when you look at the data as a whole.

 

[jdale]

Single datapoint: my family

I live in an area that provides easy, free PCR testing. I've had my self tested 10 times since September of 2020. I was vaccinated/boosted at the typical times for a middle-aged adult. I have never tested positive.
Nor have any of the other three who live with me (they get tested weekly at work/school). We aren't hermits, but we are careful. We've even done some traveling, seen some relatives, and two local vacations last summer. Given that none of us have ever tested positive and we make no attempt to social distance at home, I don't think any of us have ever had even asymptomatic Covid. So it seems that it is possible to have never caught it even at this point.

Just as an FYI, it depends on the specific PCR test with respect to accuracy of positive test results.

Omicron is pretty good at evading test results. Remember, too, that previous accurate test results don't necessarily mean subsequent test results will be accurate. One axiomatic aspect to omicron is that it's the best at evading testing accuracy.

So, while what you say about not ever having caught COVID in any form is true for some people, the CDC's statement is probably an underestimate, and it may be as much as 30% low because omicron is so infectious and so good at evading testing.

The good news, in your single data point, is that IF you had COVID at any point, you escaped unscathed. Moreover, proving you ever had it would take antibody testing which is more extensive than the standard PCR test, which probably isn't indicated now.

But unless you can more definitively prove you didn't have it, it just means you were among the lucky few who never knew they had it.

Omicron evades some rapid tests. But that's not what the tests presented here are, these are antibody assays. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest omicron results in antibodies that are harder to detect (and that would be very strange). There is some evidence that omicron results in fewer antibodies, if you have a mild case, so it's possible? But no evidence.

 

[jdale]

Back of the napkin calculations on US Covid deaths.

US Population
329,500,000

US Covid Deaths
949,000

US Population who had Covid
140,000,000

% of death for someone who has had covid
0.68%

chance of death for someone who has had covid
1 in 148

% of death for US popuplation
0.29%

chance of death for US population
1 in 347

Road deaths in US per year (average)
37,323

Years of Pandemic
2

Road deaths during pandemic
74,646

% chance of death from cars
0.05%

Chance of death from cars
1 in 1876

Calculations with citations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Comparing COVID to another disease would be far more appropriate.

According to the CDC, there are approximately 41,000,000 cases of influenza in a bad year, with 52,000 deaths. That gives influenza a mortality rate of (52,000/41,000,000)=0.13% and an infection rate of (41,000,000/329,500,000)=12.4%

Using your numbers, COVID-19 has a mortality rate of (949,000/140,000,000)=0.68%, which is five times that of influenza, and an infection rate of (140,000,000/329,500,000)= 42.5%, which is roughly three times that of influenza.

In other words, COVID-19 is one of the deadliest plagues we've faced in a long, long time.

The original post provided some insight, but made a odd choice in comparison. The follow up provided a more apt comparison, but used 1 year of influenza data vs 2 years of COVID data. COVID is more deadly than influenza. It is not quite to the degree as indicated in the reply.

Yes and no. For the infection rate, yes, that's true. But the case fatality rate calculated there is based on the number of deaths per number of cases. The time period is irrelevant as long as it is the same for the deaths and the cases (which it is). So the estimate of infectivity is not right (closer to double influenza on a per-year basis, not three times), but the estimate of deadliness is still accurate.

And that estimate of the case fatality rate used a value towards the high end of influenza deaths -- it says covid is about as deadly on a per-case basis as influenza in a very bad flu year, not a typical one. Average would be around 32,000 deaths.

 

[jdale]

An interesting article from the New York Times on Covid just now exploding in New Zealand. They mostly avoided it up until now, so basically no immunity through having caught it, but people over age 12 are 95% vaccinated. That's reasonably comparable to the 95 percent of people ages 16 and older in the US who had antibodies mentioned in this article.

I'm particularly struck by the difference in the number of cases in New Zealand compared with the max we saw in my state, Michigan, in the most recent wave. New Zealand's largest day reported, three days ago, was over 32,000 cases. We've got just about twice the population of New Zealand, and our maximum case day had just over 20,000 cases. That's about a three-fold per capita difference. Not sure what's causing such a large difference. I thought maybe kids, but a breakdown by age group doesn't really support that. I'm not sure what vaccines they took there, or when, or if they're boosting.

Where are you getting that number? The article says:
On Thursday, the country reported 23,194 new cases

And that's consistent with https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... w-zealand/

That said, they just opened things up. And omicron has a high chance of infected the vaccinated. So if people were out interacting, it could spread pretty fast until people adjust their behavior.

 

[jdale]

An interesting article from the New York Times on Covid just now exploding in New Zealand. They mostly avoided it up until now, so basically no immunity through having caught it, but people over age 12 are 95% vaccinated. That's reasonably comparable to the 95 percent of people ages 16 and older in the US who had antibodies mentioned in this article.

I'm particularly struck by the difference in the number of cases in New Zealand compared with the max we saw in my state, Michigan, in the most recent wave. New Zealand's largest day reported, three days ago, was over 32,000 cases. We've got just about twice the population of New Zealand, and our maximum case day had just over 20,000 cases. That's about a three-fold per capita difference. Not sure what's causing such a large difference. I thought maybe kids, but a breakdown by age group doesn't really support that. I'm not sure what vaccines they took there, or when, or if they're boosting.

Where are you getting that number? The article says:
On Thursday, the country reported 23,194 new cases

And that's consistent with https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... w-zealand/

That said, they just opened things up. And omicron has a high chance of infected the vaccinated. So if people were out interacting, it could spread pretty fast until people adjust their behavior.

It's the number for Feb. 28. The Michigan number is likewise not the current number, it's from a few weeks ago.

And yeah, they're just opening up, but Michigan is certainly not a bastion of following Covid-safe practices. We're under 60% fully vaxxed. A population that's 95% vaxxed probably isn't completely throwing caution to the wind just because the rules changed.

Hmmm. On Google, I see a high of 32K on Feb 28 like you say, but Feb 26 is 0 cases. I don't think these daily numbers are very reliable. There's a reason we usually look at 7-day averages. Which is currently 17232.