Is COVID over?
The two biggest causes of death are heart disease and cancer. They're off the charts compared to all the rest, so I'm showing only #3-10.
The numbers for everything except COVID-19 are from 2020. I don't imagine they've changed much since then.
The number for COVID-19 is extrapolated from the current death toll of about 450 per day. That makes it—still—the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. You may decide for yourself if this means it's "over."
It's about what smoking kills.
Looks like gun deaths just missed the front page--49,000 last year.
Ref: https://giffords.org/press-release/2022/07/2021-cdc-data-shows-record-number-of-gun-deaths/
As Matty Yglesias might say, "The median American is vanishingly unlikely to be a victim, let alone fatality, of gun violence, so the Democrat Party should move on from divisive policy prescriptions for an unimportant topic & focus on kitchen table concerns".
America's ludicrously lax "system" of gun regulations are a tragedy. But there's pretty strong evidence raising the salience of doing something about it hurts Democrats, which makes doing the things we actually need to accomplish to enact sensible gun control (defeat Republicans more more frequently, for a long time, so as to get a trifecta, plus filibuster reform, plus a non-hackish judiciary) more difficult.
If you think Yglesias is wrong on the consequences of increasing the salience of political communication about gun control, I'm all ears as to your reasoning. I wish he were wrong. But on this one, I doubt he is. The overwhelmingly bulk of voters who favor stricter gun laws are simply vastly less motivated than second amendment nuts.
The latest data that I have seen clearly shows that the vast majority of those dying from covid are the unvaccinated. So that seems like a choice the rest of us can live with when saying that the pandemic is over. The data, in chart form of course: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages
The problem, Honeyboy, is that the rest of us who ARE vaccinated are NOT immune to Covid. So with all those idiots around us acting as carriers and transmitters, we are in the midst of a serious pandemic.
The vaccinated aren't immune, but their chances of getting seriously ill are low enough that overall, they needn't worry about getting infected more than people generally worry about getting colds or the flu.
"The vaccinated aren't immune, but their chances of getting seriously ill are low enough that overall"
unlkess a variant that evade the current immunity evolves. Low probability, but not zero.
Well, yes, and if that happens, we can react. Until that point, however...
We've got multiple antiviral treatments available. We can have an adjusted vaccine available within a year. And we all know how to go back to masks and social distancing if necessary.
Not immune. But using the chart I linked to, not dying. That's why it's no longer a pandemic.
Pandemic does not depend on death. It is defined by breadth and transmissibility.
Eh. It'd pretty much defined by societal reaction to it, and society has pretty much decided we're not in a pandemic anymore.
Yes, the flu pandemic is not over either.
Allergies are the forgotten pandemic.
One's tolerance of our nation's lactose intolerance is intolerable.
What Ken says is the opposite of the truth. Those of us who are vaccinated are very unlikely to suffer serious effects from COVID, but we can, unfortunately, become infected and act as carriers and transmitters, possibly just as dangerously as the unvaccinated. Bottom line: the vaccines prevent serious illness, so you should get one, but they do not prevent transmission, so let your neighbor do what he or she wants.
Meh. Covid has become like gun violence. Most civilized countries will do whatever is communally or individually necessary to minimize it, but we’ll just ignore the problem and allow deaths/injuries from it to continue forever at higher-than-expected levels, as long as it predominantly affects poorer and browner people. Yet one more exceptional, pathological part of living in The Land Of The Free.
That chart shows that the unvaccinated have a much higher risk, but it does not show that most of those dying from covid are unvaccinated. Most of the deaths nowadays are to people who have been vaccinated.
Remember that the unvaccinated fraction of the over-65 population is very small (5% of over-65s). So even their greater risk doesn't make that segment contribute most of the total deaths.
No, I don't think this is true. 32% of the population is unvaccinated or only received one shot, and they have 6X the likelihood of dying compared to vaccinated people (16X compared to double boosted).
So, 0.32 * 6 = 1.92
And 0.64 * 1.2 = 0.8
So, I'd guess that 2/3 of the folks who are dying are unvaccinated.
Sorry, that 1.2 should be 1:
0.32 * 6 = 1.92
0.64 * 1 = 0.64
So I'd bet about 3/4s of those dying are unvaccinated or only received one shot of two.
Thanks for the reply. I talked about the low proportion of unvaccinated status in people over 65 because that is the age range where deaths are concentrated. The larger proportion of unvaccinated in younger age ranges has little weight on the mortality figures. You seem to be assuming that either the vaccination rate or the death rate are the same for the young as for the old, and this is not so.
If I had more or clearer data at my fingertips, I could be completely clear about this, but I don't. From what data I have, though, I'm convinced that in 2022, deaths of persons who received at least one dose of vaccine outnumber deaths of those who never got any vaccine.
All right, this is only for one state for a six-month time period, but I have whole-population numbers handy.
Illinois, from Jan. 26th until July 27th
Covid deaths reported = 3915
Covid deaths of vaccinated (>= primary series) = 2092
More than half of the deaths are of vaccinated people.
It looks to me that the fraction of deaths occurring among the vaccinated has got higher over time, as the protection provided by the original vaccine has decreased.
There aren't so many deaths among those who are up to date with their boosters, but unfortunately, that is only about 27% of the over-65s, and less for younger folks.
One more note: I was off the mark in accusing Pittsburgh Mike of assuming uniformity across ages for covid vaccination and death rates. He only assumed that CDC's rates were raw rates for each vaccination status segment. But the CDC doesn't give us raw rates. They "standardize" the rate for age.
I think that means they normalize the data to show a comparative rate, representing what the rate would be if the selected group had ages distributed like the general population. Therefore the rate they show for unvaccinated people is higher than the raw rate, to be directly comparable to the rate for the whole population.
That's fine for the CDC's purpose of letting each of us understand the relative risk of not being vaccinated, but it doesn't help us answer the question, "What percent of covid deaths are happening to vaccinated people?"
This, exactly. I think of Covid as over because I'm double boosted (soon to be triple with the bivalent vaccine).
Death rate per 100K unvaccinated -- 6.7
Death rate per 100K double boosted -- 0.4
and I would guess that the double vaxed people trend older and sicker, so the benefits of vaccination+boosters is probably more than that factor of 16.75.
So, if you're double boosted, you're more likely to die of the flu than Covid. 5X more likely, actually.
Even if you're vaccinated but unboosted, you're about 1.5X more likely to die of the flu.
For the record, "Is Covid over?" is a different question than the one Biden answered on "60 Minutes," which has been drawing a lot of response today.
Here's Biden:
'The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. It’s – but the pandemic is over."
He's not speaking for the WHO but as the leader of our country. Hard to say that's not a fair assessment of the day-to-day reality for most people.
Re the chart above.
Latest 7-day moving average is 253 deaths per day (and declining). At the current rate, that's about 92,000 Covid deaths per year, which would put it between diabetes and flu.
Don't know where you are getting your data, but NY Times shows a 7-day average of 465 as I type this. And this is during a low period of infection and death. Numbers will likely go up again as new variants take hold, population immunity wanes, and society increasingly does nothing to mitigate disease spread (in part because politicians keep saying things like "the pandemic is over").
The problem is that you'll never be satisfied, no matter what the numbers.
The numbers are high: Eek! We're in a pandemic
The numbers are low: Eek! We'll soon be back to high numbers and a pandemic.
It's not a useful reaction.
So to sum up, nothing he said is wrong, but you need to troll pout?
Great point! Lol
And yet you responded.
Burn in hell troll.
Worldometers says 253.
[You can google it. Kevin's blog doesn't let me post a link to it.]
Thanks for the clarification on what Biden said. I don’t think he was saying that as a scientific assessment. It was more like we, as a country, are no longer treating Covid as something we can “defeat” if we all work together. There’s no longer a chance that Covid will become like one of those old childhood diseases that was basically wiped out, although there may have been a hope of doing that at one point. Covid is now more like the cold, the flu, Fast and Furious movies. (Or, more appropriate for the season, “Halloween” movies,)
His assessment was actually pretty spot on. "Pandemic" by definition is used to refer to diseases or pathogens that are actively spreading and rapidly spreading over large territories, and multiple countries. The purpose behind this label is to basically sound an alarm and allow authorities to implement proper measures. On that basis, the COVID pandemic is pretty much over since the spread of it has become stagnant everywhere. Cases aren't down to zero (and likely never will), but they are no longer rapidly multiplying without control either.
To make a comparison. We are in a situation where the patient is no longer in critical condition, but still needs some degree of medical attention and care, just not all the more extreme interventions previously needed.
Looks like nephritis is way up....
I tried looking over time--but not completely straight forward.
By age group, deaths from all causes down for those 24 and younger, esp. for those 1 year or less, from 1980 to 2019. Way up for those 65 and older.
As for COVID being over, not sure if COVID deaths are people who would have died from the flu, heart disease, etc. in the relatively short term anyway, i.e. we're not seeing excess deaths, then its completely over. Right now it's probably still causing excess deaths, and long Covid will be with us for a while, but it's getting to "background" levels.
“…not sure if COVID deaths are people who would have died from the flu, heart disease, etc. in the relatively short term anyway…”
I mean with that attitude we really shouldn’t do anything about a lot of medical problems. It’s been 2.5 years since Covid became a thing. In that “short term,” lots of cancers, heart attacks, strokes etc cause death anyway… so what’s the point of providing care to those people even during non-Covid times, am I right? (Except that, in the pre Covid times, most people, their families, their employers, their insurers and just people with a shred of humanity inside them still saw value in helping patients of most diseases stay alive for another 1-3 years with treatment vs dying immediately…)
For people who are fully vaxxed/boosted (and continue to receive seasonal or variant-specific boosters), Covid is, for all intents and purposes, over. We'll still catch it, but it will be more or less an annoying cold. It will continue to pick off the very old and frail, just like flu and pneumonia do every year, along with those who refuse to get vaccinated.
Sucks for the very old, but I guess they did help create the callous society we live in today - not least of which by voting predominantly for Republican, even as it was being taken over by crazies.
Why extrapolate from only 450/day, Kevin? Sure, that's the current rolling average and about where things have been during the wave of the last few months, but that seems to be the around the floor for this particular statistic the way things are going. There will definitely be more variants to contend with (BA.4.6 seems to be on the rise now) and we really don't know how those will play out. Sure, this BA.4.5 wave has been blunted on deaths, but that seems largely because of the intense Omicron wave we had just shortly before it. With immunity waning and more variants escaping immunity going forward, we're still likely to have significant waves that increase the number of deaths at times. Certainly 2022 is likely to be higher than your projection if it isn't already (I'm finding it strangely hard to find numbers separated by year at the moment).
"Why extrapolate from only 450/day,"
Because that's the number we have now. Imaginary number --- like the ones you're pointing to -- are not actual evidence. They're imaginary.
I recall, perhaps 25 years ago, reading an article that claimed (at the time) that AIDS was not a significant cause of death: they used data to support the claim. Of course, most with AIDS dead from the flu, a cold etc....thus the accounting was misleading.
Similarly, the COVID total is perhaps misleading. A significant portion of the deaths are folks with co-morbidity (advanced age, heart disease, diabetes, obesity etc).
It will be always misleading. Similarity, does one die from the car accident while suffering from advanced heart disease? To try and separate such complexity into discreet packages and then trumpet victory in argument...
Well, until then COVID is a killer.
The last knife they stick in you is the one that kills you, at least officially.
Reminds me of what some Germans would say after a night of drinking and the accompanying hangover: "That last beer must have gone bad."
In July, according to CDC figures, the total number of deaths from all causes in the United States was 13% more than the number expected based on pre-pandemic mortality rates. (It's reasonable to suppose that that is a true reflection of covid-caused death. It isn't just people who were going to die anyway.) I think that's a lot of folks still being killed off by covid, so it doesn't seem to be "over".
July is the latest month where the CDC seems to have close to complete death reporting.
It's been endemic since spring of 2020. It's here forever as one in a stable of coronaviruses.
There's no definition for when a pandemic is over. Some reader comments reveal that this one probably is over (barring an unlikely new nasty mutation).
Viruses that become endemic, like the twice yearly flu pandemic, aren't referred to as pandemics because we can't eliminate the virus but, we, somewhere along the line, decided to live with it.
However, the A and B flu viruses are pandemics.
Every year.
A novel virus that becomes a pandemic and is persistent enough to become endemic with a low enough death rate that permits human populations to generally carry on with business as usual is no longer a pandemic.
That's not a scientific definition.
It is the best we have.