From the beginning of this covid pandemic till a few months ago I weekly on Thursday showed a table of vital statistics. I still on this day tend to feature some facet of this disease because it remains with us, and the older you are, the more prone you are to an earlier death. In fact, at 15 Craigside, we have returned to wearing masks in the building because of a minor outbreak. Not residents, but mostly dining staff members.
So today I'll show the latest weekly data on SARS-CoV-2 from Worldometer. Note though that many countries no longer are even reporting.
- Most cases this past week:
- World 149,666
- #1 South Korea 82,165 (55% of all world cases)
- #2 USA 18,654
- #3 Brazil 9,634
- Deaths this past week:
- World 661
- #1 Brazil 167
- #2 USA 98
- #3 Russia 86
- Deaths this past week per million population
- World 0.1
- #1 Turks and Caicos 25
- #2 Malta 7
- #3 Singapore 6
- #4 New Zealand 3
- #7 Australia 2
- #10 Brazil 0.8
- #13 Thailand 0.6
- #14 S. Korea 0.6
- #21 USA 0.3
- Note that South Korea had 4.4 times more cases than the USA, but had only twice the number of deaths per million population.
Hawaii is probably typical of the state of COVID-19 today. Not as bad as during the peak, but still a concern.
- During the past week: 71 cases, 48 hospitalizations, 9 deaths and a positivity rate of 8.4%. You can this to be less than 5%. All the deaths were of people 60 and older.
- The matter of long covid remains. The estimate in Hawaii is 10%, but the CDC reports that since the beginning of the pandemic 6% of Americans got long covid.
- The recommendation is for all to continue to wear masks in all forms of public transportation, and certainly in any crowded room.
- The most common subvariant is Kraken, the Omicron XBB.1.5 at 45%, XBB.2.3 16% and XBB.1.16 14%.
- During the early stage of the pandemic, medical science did not appreciate the danger of asymptomatic cases. There was no pressure on those who tested positive but had no or little symptoms to wear a mask. This is the group that spread the disease more than anything else.
- Doubly troublesome was that it takes up to six days for an infected individual to show symptoms, but this person can begin spreading the infection as soon as two days after getting covid.
- In summary, symptomless transmission was the problem.
- Today, with vaccinations and herd immunity, fewer and fewer are being hospitalized and dying.
- BUT, SILENT SPREAD IS STILL OCCURRING!
- A big plus, though, is that one infected with the Omicron subvariant now tend to show symptoms in 3 days, so these individuals tend to wear masks and limit the spread.
- This why the past winter was not so bad.
- On the other hand, symptoms are now milder, and if no test is taken, this is the group that is spreading covid.
- Even worse, many more who get infected show NO symptoms. These are the most dangerous people.
- The sense is that anyone with any kind of precondition, like old age, should be taking Paxlovid if they test positive. Mild or no symptoms are preventing this treatment, and the weaker can actually show later more serious symptoms.
- Adding to the current woe is that testing is now not free.
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