Im-Politic: So Much for the “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated”

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Biden administration, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, Im-Politic, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

Remember when President Biden was railing last fall that the CCP Virus crisis at that point was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” that was needlessly stressing the hospital system, and inexcusably exposing to danger those Americans who had done the right thing? How he used this claim to justify his push for vaccine mandates as a condition of employment for much of the U.S. workforce? And how numerous businesses, universities, and numerous state and local governments had already been using the same reasoning to shut the unvaccinated out of workplaces (both as employees and customers) and classrooms?

As I explained back then, this contention was completely unfounded because natural immunity and asymptomatic Covid had created towering, and likely insuperable, difficulties, in knowing the percentage of unvaxxed Americans who had even contracted the virus, much less who had been killed or hospitalized from it.

But just the other day, I discovered that even by the misleading evidence cited by the President and other fearmongers to make their case, this argument has completely fallen apart. The evidence – from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – ignores the above complications, and leaves out jurisdictions containing nearly 40 percent of America’s population.

In addition, its central supposed finding is presented – and has been ceaselessly parroted by much of the national media – without mentioning any of the context that all along would have made clear just how rock-bottom low the chances of being hospitalized or killed by the CCP Virus have been.

Specifically, claims such as “Recent CDC data shows unvaccinated people are 20 times more likely to die” left out the fact that this finding showed that in absolute terms, as of December (the latest CDC figures cited in this ABC News piece), about nine unvaccinated Americans per 100,000 were dying from the CCP Virus versus about half a vaccinated American per 100,000 dying. In other words, unvaccinated Americans had a 0.009 percent chance of dying of Covid, versus 0.0005 percent of the vaccinated. And these literally microscopic numbers warranted throwing the lives of tens of millions of Americans into turmoil?

But even if you’ve been in favor of such measures, the latest CDC figures (from April, which you can see at the above link) show that the gap has been cut in half since December in per-100,000 terms and virtually disappeared in absolute terms.

That is, 0.62 unvaccinated Americans per 100,000 were dying of the CCP Virus – about nine times greater than the vaccinated rate of 0.07 Americans per 100,000 versus the 20 times gap last December. That is, many fewer than one of every 100,000 unvaccinated and vaccinated Americans alike is now dying from the virus. And at least as interesting: These numbers mean that since December, the death rate for the unvaxxed has plummeted by 93.11 percent, while the rate for the vaxxed has barely budged.

In addition, and not so coincidentally, the CDC data on hospitalization rates for the vaxxed and unvaxxed display exactly the same trends.

Yet despite this evidence, many businesses are still insisting on some form of vaccine mandate and/or CCP Virus testing for employees, and the Biden administation is still pushing them for federal workers. So much, it seems, for “following the science” as well as for the always-dubious idea of a pandemic of the unvaccinated. 

 

Im-Politic: Race and the Virus

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African Americans, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, ethnicity, healthcare, Hispanics, hospitalization, Im-Politic, Latinos, mortality, Omicron variant, race, senior citizens, Wuhan virus

What role, if any, should race play in medically treating Americans who have contracted the CCP Virus or could be likely victims? The question has gotten awfully important given that the virus’ highly infectious Omicron variant is greatly multiplying the number of cases (though because of asymptomatic spread and a shortage of reliable tests, no one knows how greatly); because for reasons ranging from those much higher case (and therefore hospitalization) numbers to the impact of illness and vaccine mandates on healthcare workers, the hospital system is strained; and because of shortages in treatments.

And the answer that seems best supported by the data is “some role” – because the most comprehensive data does show that race (along with ethnicity) does significantly affect the odds of suffering the most serious infection outcomes (symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization, along with of course death). But by no means should race or ethnicity play a major role – because so many other factors, and above all age, are much stronger determinants of the worst virus consequences.

The argument for prioritizing age begins with the aggregate data – which comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Here’s what’s shown by the latest numbers measuring weekly CCP Virus deaths per 100,000 Americans for the week of January 15 by age group (for the most vulnerable) and by race and ethnicity for non-hispanic whites, non-hispanic blacks, and hispanics (the country’s three largest groups according to this typology).

By age group:

75-plus: 3.00

65-74: 0.79

50-64: 0.37

By race/ethnicity

non-Hispanic whites: 0.22

non-Hispanic blacks: 0.35

Hispanics: 0.41

As is obvious, senior citizens (65 and over) of all racial and ethnic groups are by far the most likely to die from the virus – which argues strongly for focusing prevention and treatment tightly on them.

The same holds for CCP Virus-related hospitalizations (keeping in mind what should be the well-known qualification that the government does a lousy job of making the critical distinctions between deaths and hospitalizations caused by the virus, and deaths and hospitalizations of infected victims that were caused by something else).

In this case, the CDC offers not weekly admissions figures per 100,000, but total statistics for the period March 1, 2020 to January 8, 2022 per identical numbers of Americans belonging to these categories. And helpfully, breakdowns are provided for both age and race/ethnic group. Here are the results:

non-Hispanic whites 65-plus years: 1,938.5 

non-Hispanic whites 50-64 years: 811.9

non-Hispanic whites 18-49 years: 287.4 8

non-Hispanic whites 0-17 years: 46.9

non-Hispanic blacks 65-plus years: 3,835.4

non-Hispanic blacks 50-64 years: 2,165.0 

non-Hispanic blacks 18-49 years: 886.3 

non-Hispanic blacks 0-17 years: 126.7

Hispanic or Latino 65-plus years: 3,550.1

Hispanic or Latino 50-64 years: 2,053.3

Hispanic or Latino 18-49: 924.6 6

Hispanic or Latino 0-17: 115.0

The clear conclusion is that a national public health policy focused on preventing CCP Virus-related hospitalization would focus not on any single racial or ethnic group as a whole, but on the following groups in this (descending) order: Non-hispanic blacks over 65, hispanics and latinos over 65, blacks between 50 and 64 years, hispanics and latinos between 50 and 64 years, and non-hispanic whites over 65.

But these figures make another, comparably important point: The differences between blacks over 65 and hispanics and latinos over 65 are pretty modest. So even between these highly vulnerable groups, targeting treatment or prevention strategies according to race and ethnicity doesn’t seem to provide very useful advice. The differences between blacks among blacks from 50 to 64 years of age, hispanics and latinos of the same age group, and white 65 and over are even smaller, and therefore focusing on racial and ethnic considerations seems that much less warranted.

The CDC has also presented mortality data by age and racial/ethnic group simultaneously, but in a slightly different way – with these statistics showing how their virus-related deaths as a percentage of all deaths for these categories compare with that group’s share of the U.S. population overall. Groups whose shares of virus-related deaths are higher than their shares of the population as a whole are more vulnerable than average, and groups whose shares of virus-related deaths are lower than their shares of the total population are less vulnerable than average. Here’s that breakdown for senior citizens (the over 65s), drawn from Figure 3b in the link above) along with their total numbers as of 2019 (from the Census Bureau according to Table 1 in this link):

85-plus years: 5.89 million

non-Hispanic whites: 0.6 percent below

Hispanics: 1.3 percent higher

non-Hispanic blacks: 1.0 percent higher

75-84 years: 15.41 million

non-Hispanic whites: 7.6 percent below

Hispanics: 5.0 percent above

non-hispanic blacks: 3.8 percent above

65-74 years: 31.49 million

non-Hispanic whites: 14.60 percent below

Hispanics: 8.5 percent above

non-Hispanic blacks 6.7 percent above

As should be obvious, when it comes to the oldest seniors, non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Hispanics are experiencing CCP Virus-related deaths closely related to their shares of the overall population, there’s little if any reason to discriminate along racial and ethnic lines for virus-fighting policymakers.

The spreads are wider for Americans between 75 and 84, but mainly for non-hispanic whites. The difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks is anything but dramatic.

The situation changes more dramatically for the younger seniors, but again, mainly for non-hispanic whites. Hispanics’ and non-Hispanic blacks’ seem in the same ballpark.

Interestingly, if you look at the charts, black over-vulnerability stays level from there on for the 55-64 and 45-54 age groups, but keeps rising for Hispanics until the 25-34-year cohort . Non-Hispanic whites’ under-vulnerability stabilizes at the same point.

Even more interesting – for a change, the (rightly) embattled CDC seems to have gotten it about right.  Although the agency notes urge healthcare providers and the state governments that regulated them to “carefully consider potential additional risks of COVID-19 illness for patients who are members of certain racial and ethnic minority groups,” it specifies that “Age is the strongest risk factor for severe COVID-19 outcomes” and its relevant guidance on major risk factors for severe virus outcomes concentrates on medical conditions.

CDC also recommends paying some attention to those who “live in congregate settings, and face more barriers to healthcare,” among other “social determinants of health” that can influence risk, and that “include neighborhood and physical environment, housing, occupation, education, food security, access to healthcare, and economic stability.” 

Such Americans of course are disproportionately black and Hispanic. At the same time, the agency also admits that “we are still learning about how conditions that affect the environments where people live, learn, and work can influence the risk for infection and severe COVID-19 outcomes.” Plus, there’s no shortage of whites facing similar challenges.

Given those uncertainties, the aforementioned healthcare provision shortages, and given that Census pegs the numbers of Americans over 65 at nearly 53 million, it’s clear that protecting the elderly – whatever they look like – should be the unquestioned Job One for U.S. healthcare policy and healthcare providers.              

Im-Politic: Omicron Looks Fairly Mild – Except Against a Key Biden Virus Claim

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden, Biden administration, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, hospitalization, Im-Politic, Omicron variant, vaccination, vaccines, Wuhan virus

I was struck by the statement made by Anthony S. Fauci on Tuesday that the Omicron variant of the CCP Virus is so hyper-infectious that it will “ultimately find just about everybody.” I wasn’t struck by the words of President Biden’s chief medical adviser because Omicron has found me healthwise. Instead, I was struck because the pandemic keeps finding my blogging – even when I don’t intend to write about it.

And so it’s been today. I started out planning to post an item about the Ukraine crisis and globalization (which I will definitely turn to), but Mr. Biden’s latest virus-related remarks have jerked me right back to the pandemic. Specifically responsible was his claim that unless many more Americans become fully vaccinated, Omicron’s rapid spread will mean that the nation’s hospitals will be crowded with resisters who contract unusually severe cases, leaving “little room for anyone else who might have a heart attack or an injury in an automobile accident or any injury at all.”

This point makes perfect sense. Even if Omicron’s effects are relatively mild for most victims, if the absolute numbers of cases are high enough, even a relatively small percentage of infections serious enough to require hospitalization would be enough to overwhelm the hospital system. And if, as Mr. Biden and so many others insist, the overwhelming majority of those hospitalized are unvaccinated individuals, then the case for mandatory vaccination would look open and shut.

But to use one of the President’s favorite phrases, “Here’s the deal.” Even if every American was fully vaxxed and boosted, if Fauci is right about Omicron’s eventual reach, then the hospital system will get overwhelmed anyway. Just do the math.

The whole U.S. population is a little above 330,000,000. If everyone gets Omicron, that’s 330,000,000 cases. How many are resulting in hospitalizations? The President says that unvaccinated Americans are “seventeen times more likely to get hospitalized” from the CCP Virus than the vaxxed.

This figure seems to come from the latest data kept by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which finds that for every 100,000 American adults, 67.8 “Covid-19-Associated Hospitalizations” take place each week, versus a rate of only 3.9 hospitalizations for the fully vaccinated. That’s a big difference. But if you project those numbers out to the full 330,000,000 population rather than a sample of 100,000, you get 12,870 fully vaxxed hospitalizations each week.

That figure is a lot smaller than the number of “staffed (operational) acute care beds” in America (534,964, according to the latest count from the American Hospital Association). It’s also a lot smaller than the number of intensive care unit beds (96,5960).

But all by itself, it seems to be enough greatly to stress the heathcare system, given that (as the President noted), it’s got many other responsibilities; given that the 12,870 figure represents the number of new hospital patients added each week; and given that many of these fully vaxxed CCP Virus patients are going to stay hospitalized for a certain period even as new patients in this category keep coming in. 

At the same time, the CDC data on fully vaxxed Covid hospital patients surely creates an understatement for one big reason: They only go up to the week of last November 20. Therefore, they predate the recording of the first U.S. Omicron case (last December 1.)

The United States still lacks comprehensive nation-wide statistics on Omicron-related hospitalizations of the fully vaxxed. But some preliminary numbers indicate that their impact on hospitals will be catastrophic. For example, for the week of last December 27 (more than a month after the latest CDC numbers but just as the first Omicron case was reported), New York State found that 4.59 out of every 100,000 city residents who had been fully vaccinated were hospitalized for the CCP Virus.

That’s a positively infintestimal number. But multiply it out by the total 330,000,000 U.S. population, and that’s more than 1.5 million virus-related hospitalizations of the fully vaxxed. And even if you doubt that these numbers would hold for the entire country (because the United States is big and diverse), a breakthrough hospitalization rate only half that high would still produce more than 750,000 such cases.    

Some more recent figures are even more alarming. As of January 6, the Las Vegas, Nevada area experienced 27,205 breakthrough virus cases (e.g., number of infections of the fully vaxxed), of which 873 were hospitalized. That’s 3.21 percent. Ohio’s official Covid-19 dashboard says that of 53,819 state residents counted as “Covid-19 Hospitalizations,” since January 1, 2021, 2,991 have been  fully vaccinated. That’s 5.56 percent.

According to this January 6 post, in Connecticut, “The overall percentage of fully vaccinated people hospitalized with COVID has also risen to 32 percent, from about 20 percent early last week.”

Massachusetts has reported that as of early January, the state’s hospitals were treating 2,970 patients with confirmed cases of the CCP Virus. Of these, 1,348 were fully vaccinated. That’s more than 45 percent!

In fact, once again, if these numbers are too high by a factor of two, they still add up to overwhelmed hospital systems.

Help is on the way in the form of recently approved treatments (though it looks like due to Biden administration shortsightedness or caution, they’ll be kind of scarce for several months), and in the distinct possibilities that the Omicron wave will crest sooner rather than later, and that follow-on virus strains will be even less virulent. What’s more certain is that Omicron is making a complete – and unnecessarily divisive – mockery of Mr. Biden’s continuing “pandemic of the unvaccinated” claims.

Im-Politic: Covid Derangement Syndrome

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CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, health care, hospitals, Im-Politic, mask mandate, masks, Omicron variant, Politico, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

If there’s emerged an Exhibit A as to how completely incoherent the nation’s public health establishment and medical systems have become on dealing with the CCP Virus (including its super-infectious but generally mild and often asymptomatic Omicron variant), it’s an article yesterday in Politico headlined “Health care workers are panicked as desperate hospitals ask infected staff to return.”

As is so often the case, moreover, this virus-related trend and its fallout has been reported without any allusions to the incoherence. And practically all of the muddle is expressed in the very first paragraph, starting with the very first half of the very first sentence:

“While most health workers are vaccinated, many are still falling sick, exacerbating a staff shortage as more Americans seek hospital care. The reliance on employees who may still be infectious comes despite objections from nurses‘ unions and the American Medical Association, which warned the decision puts patients’ health and safety at risk. And there are no requirements that patients be notified if their caregiver is sick.”

Presumably, when reporter Rachael Levy writes that “most health workers are vaccinated,” she means “fully vaccinated” – including boosters. Yet “many are still falling sick.” Readers never learn how many or, more important, what percentage. But it’s no doubt lots – indeed, enough to create and worsen staff shortages.

That alone should blow a big hole in the various sweeping “vaccines work” claims used, notably, to justify mandates for the jabs, especially since these health care workers by definition must overwhelmingly be individuals young enough and free enough of the special medical conditions to be able to avoid illness serious enough to render them too infeebled to report to work — much less to threaten grave illness or death.

But the headline indicates that the concern of the “panicked” health care workers isn’t simply that the colleagues who believe they should be staying home are crawling in, uncontrollably shedding pathogens and threatening staff and patients alike, and/or are physically incapable of performing their duties adequately.

They’re also concerned that these colleagues are “infected” in the first place.

Yet these worries are loopy for any number of glaringly obvious reasons. For example, if infected health care workers are asymptomatic, they should be fully capable of doing their jobs. In addition, the evidence so far seems to show that most virus victims don’t spread the pathogen (see, e.g., here and here), and when they do, they’re most contagious very early in their infections.

That last point is crucial because it’s behind the latest guidance for health care facilities issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As Levy (thankfully!) reports, this advisory allows such providers “to bring back workers after five days of isolation, instead of 10, without a negative Covid-19 test.” What’s more, “In cases where workforce shortages become extreme, hospitals can bring back staff without any isolation period.”

Stranger still: Presumably the health care workers who so fear their supposedly irresponsible colleagues are, according to their own definitions, behaving very responsibly themselves. In other words, they’re surely individuals who are both fully vaccinated and dedicated mask-wearers.

If they’re vaccinated, of course, it’s now clear that their protection against infection is far from perfect, but that their protection against severe illness and death is very good. That is, if they do get infected, and since they are young-ish and strong-ish, they’ll recover fully and pretty quickly — assuming they experience any symptoms at all.

Further, since they work in hospitals, they’re almost certainly also wearing the kinds of masks that are highly effective in preventing infection, not the cloth masks worn so widely outside hospitals that even the CDC has found provide pretty ineffective protection. So have the worried workers now joined the “vaccines and many masks don’t work at all” camp?

It’s true that the Omicron variant may be a virulent enough spreader to confound both vaccines and boosters and even high quality masks, at least to a significant degree. But if this is the case, to date, the health effects of Omicron spread look much too weak to justify panic or even close for anyone without specific vulnerabilities.

Yes, hospitals are full of people with such vulnerabilities – the patients. But the CDC guidelines contain recommendations for dealing with them.

Not that the CDC has covered itself with glory throughout the pandemic. Or that this specific approach that it’s taken to the health care system will keep everyone involved fully protected.

But as one hospital CEO quoted by Levy reminds, “We don’t have good choices — or the choices that we want.” A new consensus seems to be emerging in the nation that America has to “learn to live” with the CCP Virus. Unless it’s believed that somehow the health care delivery system should be an exception (and should be crippled until somehow something close to Zero Covid is reached without it?) hospital workers need to follow this advice, too.

Im-Politic: It’s Time for Them to Go

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden adminstration, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children, coronavirus, COVID 19, Fauci, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, hospitalization, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, Mary T. Bassett, misinformation, New York State, pediatric vaccination, public health, Rochelle Walensky, schools, testing, vaccinations, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

As the New Year brings Americans their third calendar year of coping with the CCP Virus, it’s abundantly clear that there’s no such thing as a firing offense when it comes to the nation’s leading public health authorities. And it’s been evident in not one but two cases over the last week alone.

Case number one involves Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser. Fauci should already be in near-boiling legal water over the likelihood that he lied to Congress in denying that the National Institute of Alergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) never funded dangerous gain-of-function virus-related research in China. Now he’s just (unwittingly) admitted that he’s been guilty of pandemic-related fear-mongering of the first order on the vital issue of safeguarding children’s well-being.

Fauci has long warned about the dangers posed to minors by the virus and linked vaccination of pupils (along with mask requirements for them) to the goal of keeping schools safely opened. And he’s focused not only on pediatric infection numbers, but on hospitalization rates – widely considered a far more serious matter because they supposedly reveal the incidence of serious and potentially fatal infections. As he argued on NBC News‘ “Meet the Press” on August 8:

“There are a lot of children now – all you need to do is do a survey of the pediatric hospitals throughout the country, and you’re seeing a considerable number of young people who are not only infected but who are seriously ill….the numbers compared to the elderly are less, but that’s a false comparison. These kids are getting sick. We’ve really got to make sure we protect them.”

The alarmist nature of his comments should have been clear from the start, as, for example, that week, according to the CCP Virus data tracker maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the virus-related rate of new hospital admissions for Americans under 17 averaged about 0.14 per 100,000 – which comes to an absolute number of about 100 total hospitalizations among the 73.1 million in that age group as of the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures.

But as I’ve explained, by that time, a national healthcare leader like Fauci should have been aware of the big problem with the hospitalization data in general – they rarely distinguished between patients who were hospitalized because of the virus, and patients hospitalized for other reasons who happened to test positive for the pathogen once admitted. In other words, many “Covid-related hospitalizations” have had nothing to do with Covid.

Here’s how one expert has explained the problem:

“[I]f you look at the children are hospitalized many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID. What we mean by that is that if a child goes in the hospital they automatically get tested for COVID and they get counted as a COVID hospitalized individual, when in fact they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that.”

“So it’s over counting the number of children who are ‘hospitalized’ with COVID as opposed to because of COVID.”

This expert’s name? Anthony Fauci. But he didn’t make the admission until last week – when total national “Covid-related hospitalizations” for kids still numbered in the low hundreds.

Yet bizarrely, Fauci still favors vaccination for this highly secure demographic cohort, in line with the equally bizarre authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommendation from the CDC.  And this even though the jabs for five-to-fifteen years olds are approved only on an “emergency basis”; even though the evidence used seems to consist of a single trial of some 3,100 children; and even though – unlike far more vulnerable older Americans – these vaccine recipients will mostly have many decades from now for any side effects to emerge.

So on the grounds of spreading virus misinformation alone, Fauci should be gone.

Speaking of pediatric hospitalizations and misinformation, it’s also time to sack new New York State Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett as well. Also last Monday, touting the imperative of pediatric vaccinations, she declared, “Many people continue to think that children do not become infected with COVID. This is not true. Children become infected with COVID and some will become hospitalized. The vaccination coverage remains too low. We need to get child vaccinations up, particularly in the 5-to-11-year-old age group.”

At this time, New York State had recorded 184 child covid hospitalizations (out of a total under-18 population of 4.18 million, according to the latest Census Bureau data). But alarmism wasn’t the worst of Bassett’s offenses. Instead, it was this jaw-dropping admission: 

“The numbers we gave on pediatric admissions weren’t intended to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infection. These were small numbers that we reported in our health alert. That was based on 50 hospitalizations, and I’ve now given you some larger numbers, but they’re still small numbers. It really is to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination.”

Lying to the public isn’t a criminal offense – and probably shouldn’t be.  But it sure should be a firing offense. 

According to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who should be facing big job security questions herself due to the nation’s crying shortage of CCP Virus testing capability despite the Biden administration’s backing for sweeping vaccine mandates, her agency’s controversial decision last week on isolation for indivduals with asymptomatic cases stemmed partly from the “relatively low rates of isolation for all of this pandemic. Some science has demonstrated less than a third of people are isolating when they need to.”  Given Americans’ truth-challenged public health officials, reluctance to follow their advice and instructions is easy to understand.            

 

Im-Politic: Despite Omicron, Progress Against the Virus So Far Has Continued

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CCP Virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, hospitalization, Im-Politic, mortality, Omicron variant, Washington Post

I wasn’t planning on writing on CCP Virus-related issues today in part because I just posted on them on Saturday. But given today’s stock market rout (so far) and the recent instances of virus-related disruption of sports, education, and business due to fears about the highly contagious Omicron variant, it seems worthwhile to present the latest data on the virus’ ongoing impact on public health so far.

And the big takeaway so far is that despite Omicron’s arrival in the United States and the continuation of the Delta variant’s dominance of reported domestic virus cases, the damage to Americans’ health as best as can be measured has continued a persistent decline.

Although these conclusions need to be seen as very preliminary, they deserve attention for several reasons, especially considering the magnitude of the policy response so far. First, although Omicron was probably present in America well before the first case was confirmed on December 1, it’s now nearly three weeks after that apparent initial infection. So the new variant has been here for a while. Second, the also-highly infectious Delta variant still accounts for fully 97 percent of all reported cases across the country as of yesterday, although certain regions (like the New York City metropolitan area), have recorded a much greater Omicron presence.

Third, it’s getting to be winter throughout the United States. So any new variant that came state-side was inevitably going to pack quite an infection punch simply because respiratory viruses tend to spread faster in cold weather, and mainly because more of us spend more time in indoor spaces with less-than-super-ventilation.

So given all that, here’s what’s been happening since December 1 with the two indicators that tell us the most about the public health impact – hospitalizations and deaths (although, because of reporting methodology problems described here, neither is great):

First, new hospitalization admissions, as measured by daily changes in the seven-day averages (7DAs), which smooth out the random fluctuations that always pop up over shorter periods. And I’ve switched over to getting them straight from the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rather than taking them from the Washington Post‘s virus tracker – which also draws from the CDC, and remains very good, but which doesn’t seem to transfer hospitalization information from the agency consistently enough.

On December 1, when the first Omicron case was detected, the 7DA average of these admissions was rising at a five percent rate. By December 4, this rate of increase had hit 16 percent, and stayed in that neighborhood through the ninth. But it was back to the single digits three days later, and has fallen steadily since. As of last Friday, moreover, the 7DA had actually fallen by two percent. So if anything, it looks like the strain on hospitals, has been easing most recently overall in the nation.

The trends in the 7DAs in the daily death counts have been much more volatile, but considerable improvement can be seen here, too. (And these figures come from the Post tracker.)

As of December 1, the 7DA of these counts was down by nearly 22 percent. But it shot up to just over 42 percent on December 3, and stayed above 40 percent through the seventh.

But a dramatic drop-off began right afterwards. On December 8, the 7DA sank all the way down to abut 13.5 percent. The following day, 3.3 percent. And on the tenth, it declined by nearly seven percent. Moreover, this rate kept falling through the fourteenth – and by double-digits on two of those days.

On the fifteenth, it jumped back into positive territory (nearly 7.5 percent), but as of last Friday was back down to a little more than 4.5 percent. (For the record, we have numbers for Saturday, the eighteenth and yesterday, and they were about five and four percent, respectively, but reporting for weekends can be pretty spotty, so don’t make too much of them.)

In other words, American deaths associated with the CCP Virus are still taking place every single day – and in big numbers. On December 1, that day’s count was 2,678. Last Friday, it was 2,099. But that’s down nearly 22 percent. Measured in terms of the more reliable 7DA, they’re up from 1,048 to 1,291 – up more than 23 percent.

But what’s most important – and the most that can realistically be hoped for – is that the rate of increase slows. If these somewhat encouraging trends hold, let’s hope that the Biden administration and other public health authorities recognize that this is what the 7DA data have been showing both on the mortality and hospitalization fronts.

Im-Politic: More Americans-Last Immigration Tripe from The New York Times

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CCP Virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, Immigration, public health, The New York Times, Title 42, Wuhan virus

It looks – embarassingly – like New York Times editorial writers don’t bother to look at the newspaper’s comprehensive vaccine tracker feature. Or at least they didn’t bother when preparing today’s editorial calling for an end to a regulation called Title 42, “an emergency public health order that allows the government to turn away migrants at the nation’s borders during a pandemic.”

According to the edit, a big part of the reason is that “the Covid-19 pandemic is receding.”

But flip to the paper’s “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count” section, and you see that one of the most reliable (though far from perfect) indicators of the pandemic’s virulence – hospitalizations – are no longer declining as steeply as they had been starting in early September. And the daily death count is showing signs of stabilizing after falling rapidly starting in mid-September.

Moreover, the numbers are likely to keep worsening in the coming weeks because winter is coming, and because the CCP Virus in all its variants is seasonal – like many other infectious diseases. In other words, now that the weather is getting colder, some kind of new wave seems sure to arrive.

Incidentally, the edit’s other stated prime rationale for ending Title 42 is just completely bonkers. The Times writes of evidence that’s recently surfaced of an official for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supposedly making clear that “there was little public health rationale for instituting the policy, since the virus was already spreading in the United States by the time the Title 42 order was signed” in March, 2020 under the Trump administration.

In other words, a then-little known and therefore greatly feared disease was metastasizing among the American population, and it was – xenophobic? racist? choose your own disparaging adjective? – to minimize the odds that infected foreigners would make the problem even worse?

And in fact, this last argument illustrates the most fundamental problem with the editorial – and the paper’s overall position on immigration. Times‘ ownership obviously favors an Open Borders-like policy, which is of course perfectly fine and its inalienable right. What’s neither is its unwillingness to show some intellectual honesty and openly say so.

Im-Politic: Fauci Doctors the Facts Again

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden administration, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CCP Virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chris Wallace, coronavirus, COVID 19, essential workers, Fauci, Fox News, Im-Politic, law enforcement, mortality, Officer Down Memorial Page, police, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, had a ready answer this past Sunday when a news anchor asked him whether or not he bears any responsibility for the growing criticism he’s attracted during the CCP Virus pandemic:

“[I] have stood — always making science, data, and evidence be what we guide ourselves by. And I think people who feel differently, who have conspiracy theories, who deny reality that’s looking em straight in the eye, those are people that don’t particularly care for me.

“And that’s understandable because what I do and I try very hard is to be guided by the truth. And sometimes, the truth becomes inconvenient for some…people, so they react against me. That just is what it is. There’s not much I can do about that…”

Actually, here’s something he can do about it. He can stop presenting facts that are not only completely free-floating but so devoid of any context that they become completely misleading – as he did on the same program.

Asked by Fox News‘ Chris Wallace whether vaccine mandates should be enforced for essential workers like police – many of which oppose the requirements, Fauci declared,

“We now know the statistics, more police officers die of COVID than they do in other causes of death. So, it doesn’t make any sense to not trying to protect yourself as well as the colleagues that you work with.”

Fauci’s claim is correct strictly speaking – at least according to this organization that tracks police deaths in the line of duty. But comparing police virus deaths with other causes of police fatalities has zero to do with how especially susceptible or not officers are to Covid. In fact, the only valid way of determining the relative vulnerability of these law enforcement personnel is to compare their CCP Virus experiences – in this case, mortality – versus that of their closest population-wide peer group.

And what these data make plain as day is that police nationwide are much less likely to die of the virus than those most like them demographically.

The peer group in question is working age adults, and this source pegs their population at 170,975,648 as of last year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that through October 13, they’d suffered 233,965 deaths. “involving” the CCP Virus (which RealityChek regulars know is a problematic concept). So that’s a mortality rate of 0.14 percent.

The number of police officers whose deaths have been attributed to having contracted the disease on duty is 479 according to the aforementioned Office Down Memorial Page. And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has pegged the nationwide number of police and sheriff’s patrol officers at 654,900. Do the math, and you get a death rate of 0.07 percent. That’s only half the level for the working age adult control group.

Surely one big reason for this disparity is that law enforcement personnel are healthier as a rule than their closest demographic peers. But far from “explaining away” Fauci’s mistake, it’s a point so obvious that he should know it. He should also realize that because, like other essential personnel, policemen and women stayed on the job during the worst of the virus, stayed on it long before vaccines were available, and worked jobs that required lots of personal contact, many surely contracted Covid – and recovered, thereby acquiring natural immunity. Despite his enthusiasm for the mandates, as even Fauci has admitted, this inconvenient (for vaccine zealots) truth of virology is tough to square with calls for mass, indiscriminate, and forced jabbing.

I’m enough of a believer in vaccines’ effectiveness and in the seriousness of the CCP Virus that I cringe every time I hear some pundit or news talker argue that members of the public health establishment like Fauci and the politicians that follow them have supported vaccine mandates and other forms of anti-virus business and behavioral curbs primarily because they’re control freaks. But every time I hear such folks so blatantly and sanctimoniously peddle this kind of misinformation, it makes me wonder.

Im-Politic: A Biden Administration Whopper on Vaccinations

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Biden, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, Im-Politic, Jeff Zients, vaccinations, vaccine mandates, Wuhan virus

It’s a good thing for Jeff Zients that social media’s policies on spreading misinformation are so one-sided. If they weren’t, the White House CCP Virus response coordinator (no, not his official title!) would be suspended or banned.

This past Wednesday, Zients told reporters that President Biden’s vaccination requirements, announced in a September 9 speech, had “increased vaccination rates by 20-plus percentage points.” And he continued, “Higher vaccination rates make workplaces, schools, and communities safer; accelerate our path out of the pandemic; and strengthen our economy.”

There’s no doubt that the latest virus wave has been receding by the most important measures – as I wrote October 1. Do higher vaccination rates make the above places safer? That’s entirely plausible. Will they strengthen the economy? We’ll just have to wait on that one, since the data aren’t in yet.

But the claim that since Mr. Biden’s speech, U.S. vaccination rates are up by 20-plus percentage points is just untrue. Indeed, it’s not close to being true. Further, it’s not close to being true even if our gauge is eligible Americans who are at least only partly vaccinated. This measure would take into account that not all of those eligible for vaccinations haven’t yet had the chance to complete the two-shot regimens, and that vaccines have not yet been recommended for childen younger than twelve.

And we know how untrue Zients’ contention is because it’s completely contradicted by the federal government’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The agency’s COVID Data Tracker monitors vaccination rates over time, and it’s interactive, so changes since the Biden announcement can easily be calculated. And here’s what’s happened with at-least-partial vaccination percentage rates by age group from the day of the Biden announcement through this past Wednesday.

                        Sept. 9 rate        Oct. 13 rate

12-15:                  51.2                    55.5

16-17                   59.3                    62.8

18-24                   60.9                    64.9

25-39                   64.2                    68.2

40-49                   73.3                    76.7

50-64                   81.3                    83.8

65-74                   94.9                    97.8

75-plus                89.6                    92.3

In fact, these official figures make clear just how wildly un-close to being true Zients’ claim is. The biggest percentage point change in the at-least-partial vaccination rates during this period hasn’t been twenty.  It’s been 4.3 – for the 12-15 group. The next biggest is four – for the 18-24 and the 25-39 groups.

Of course also crucial to point out (as I did in that October 1 post) – the substantial improvements in the virus picture have taken place despite this unimpressive vaccination progress. Which raises the questions of just how effective the vaccines actually have been in influencing the course of the pandemic, and how effective the mandates – which could come into force as early as today – actually are and will be going forward. After all, if an administration can’t or won’t describe this key piece of the pandemic story so inaccurately, why should anyone trust in their ideas to fight it effectively?       

Im-Politic: Anti-Pandemic Economy Clamps Could Be Strengthening Just as the Virus Threat is Weakening

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Andrew Jackson, Battle of New Orleans, Biden, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, data, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, Jobs, lockdowns, mortality, OurWorldinData.org, stay-at-home, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, vaccines, War of 1812, Washington Post, Wuhan virus

What a stunning and thoroughly depressing point the U.S. fight against the CCP Virus may be at. Governments at all levels, private businesses, and non-profit institutions of all kinds are imposing all sorts of vaccination mandates on employees that could result in significant layoffs for the recalcitrant (including those with natural virus immunity) and equally important damage to the economy. And at the same time, the most reliable data now show that the virus’ destructive impact – recently renewed by the highly infectious Delta variant – is easing once again, and for reasons that look completely unrelated to vaccination rates.

Not that the most reliable CCP Virus data are incredibly reliable. As I’ve previously written, there are some awfully dubious definitions of “Covid-related deaths” being used across the country, and major holes in the coverage achieved by the official record keepers. In addition, serious problems have been revealed even in the hospitalization numbers – which I’d considered the most accurate gauge of the virus’ effects on human health.

All the same, the proverbial statistical curve for both indicators is now bending down for the first time since Delta began dominating the American virus scene in mid-summer.

As often the case, my source for the death and hospitalization figures are the Washington Post‘s very user-friendly CCP Virus databases. For this post, I’m also using some hospitalization figures for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website. Unless otherwise mentioned, the specific numbers here are changes in seven-day averages (7DA), which smooth out random fluctuations that tend to occur on a day-to-day basis.

Regarding mortality, the 7DA for daily reported covid-related deaths bottomed out on July 6 at 209 and it had plummeted by nearly 30 percent during the previous week. And through July 27, the 7DA stayed below 300. But by August 16, it hit 651 and thereafter began soaring rapidly.

By the 18^th, the 7DA average had jumped by nearly 32 percent week-on-week, and the rate of increase continued surging until it peaked on the 24^th at an appalling 77.90 percent. But thereafter, these increases dropped dramaticaly. A week later, they were down to just over 21 percent. That is, consistent with the “bend the curve” criteria, the problem kept worsening, but it was worsening much more slowly, which counts as welcome progress.

This encouraging development continued through September 9, by which time the 7DA was rising on a weekly basis by just 3.17 percent. In other words, it nearly stopped rising altogether. But this fall-off proved to be a head fake. Almost immediately, the weekly increases in the 7DA for covid-related mortality bounced back, and reached a discouraging 27.49 percent in less than a week (by the 15^th).

Yet another decline has followed, and this one has been considerably deeper. By September 21, the weekly 7DA increase was back below ten percent, and just four days later, hit zero for the first time since the second half of July.

Since then, and through yesterday, the 7DA has not only been decreasing on a weekly basis. It’s been decreasing faster and faster. Yesterday, the decline stood at 6.74 percent.

The hospitalization story has been somewhat different, and brighter, especially since early September. The 7DA for daily new hospital admissions for CCP Virus-related reasons bottomed out on June 25 at 1,824 and at that point, it was down on week by just under 5.20 percent.

By August 9, the situation had turned around completely – and then some. The 7DA had soared by 34 percent. Afterwards, however, came a consistent decline. By the 20^th, the weekly rate of increase in the 7DA had fallen to ten percent, and by September 1, the increases had stopped. The weekly 7DA registered its first weekly decline on September 6 (down two percent), and its first double-digit decrease on the 21^st (ten percent).

Since then through the 30^th, it’s fallen by ten percent or more twice, and the weekly decrease in the 7DA hasn’t dipped below seven percent.

Given the mushrooming of vaccine mandates and widespread claims – including by President Biden – that the nation is now facing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” you’d think that the above improvements stemmed overwhelmingly from increased vaccination rates. But the data – in this case, from the OurWorldinData.org website, provide no support for this conclusion.

Specifically, on August 24, when the 7DA of daily covid-related deaths was skyrocketing at that awful 77.90 percent weekly rate, 51 percent of Americans were fully vaccinated against the CCP Virus, and 9.1 percent were partly vaccinated. By yesterday, these figures were only 55 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.

On August 9, when the 7DA for covid-related hospitalizations was growing by 34 percent week-on-week, half of Americans were fully vaccinated and 8.5 percent were partly vaccinated. Through yesterday, those numbers hadn’t changed dramatically, either.

Could mask-wearing be responsible? Trouble is, I haven’t seen any figures on how this practice has changed in recent months. (If you have, let me know.) As far as I’m concerned, the real reasons for this good CCP Virus news have to do with rising levels of natural immunity (especially important given Delta’s virulence), the distinct possibility that the CCP Virus is one of those pathogens whose lethality wanes as it mutates (an important Delta consideration, too), and the nation’s better treatment record – due to a combination of more experienced doctors and new therapeutics.

In early 1815, then-General Andrew Jackson led American forces to a great victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans. But due to that era’s painfully slow communications, the triumph came about two weeks after the United States and Great Britain signed the treaty ending the War of 1812.  It makes me wonder how long the U.S. public and private sectors — which don’t have the communications excuse — will keep threatening the economy’s recovery with redoubled anti-virus measures just as the pandemic tide appears to be turning.