https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20and%20CHA%20-%20Children%20and%20COVID-19%20State%20Data%20Report%203.3.22%20FINAL.pdf indicates that about 0.01% of COVID-19 pediatric cases result in death and 0.7% result in hospitalization. However, the large volume of COVID-19 pediatric cases means that 914 children have died and 39,974 have been hospitalized for COVID-19 as of 3/3/2022.
2 Likes
I think everything you said is the entire point of the article.
“We should not normalize children getting sick – and rarely dying- from any disease for which a vaccine exists.”
We used to be upset when a child would die from a vaccine-preventable disease. It would make national news. Today we have many more dying and dead from Covid, yet there is no shock among some. It’s “normal”. Just another infection. Like measles.
3 Likes
edit sorry wrong post
Not sure any part of this pandemic has been considered “normal” by most parents.
Perhaps the shock generates from the rarity of the event. Measles outbreaks are rare in very large part because vax coverage is high in this country and the vaccine by and large prevents infection. No such luck in the current pandemic, as we all know many who have become infected with and even ill from Covid despite being vaxed and boosted. One may be 93% less likely to die, but that still means a whole lot of vaxed people still died. We may have “normalized” their deaths as well - at least, I’m not reading much in the news about those people either.
I have a different perception and recollection of our recent history with “public health” because of a conversation with a particular friend who shared with me about 10 years ago that 1-2 million people die worldwide each year (wholly preventable or lessening of serious symptoms) by not being vaccinated for various ailments and that those numbers included ~50,000 American men, women and children each year. I could not believe those numbers so I looked them up and sure enough they were true. So this “new normal” has always been kind of normal, but the difference is that we have a larger awareness due to the mass scale of this particular pandemic. This pandemic has revealed something that was always present from my point of view, but I know people who are “shocked” by that assessment.
3 Likes
Would love a link that doesn’t include Covid if possible. Perhaps from the flu on a bad year?
A bad flu year leaves about 50,000 dead in the US: Disease Burden of Flu | CDC
The mostly-Omicron wave of COVID-19 since December 1, 2021 has left about 180,000 dead in the US: CDC COVID Data Tracker
Omicron may be less severe than previous variants, but it is not yet down to the level of common cold or even the flu.
1 Like
Exactly.
Part of the “normalizing” of Covid.
From above: “The mostly-Omicron wave of COVID-19 since December 1, 2021 has left about 180,000 dead in the US: CDC COVID Data Tracker”
Yes. And we were pretty unprepared for that wave. I think everyone agrees we were caught flat-footed and didn’t have near enough testing capability at the time it would have been helpful, or sufficient supplies of the antivirals like Paxlovid. Clearly not having enough testing hurt in at least two ways—a lot of people didn’t know they had covid, so the spread was likely far greater than it might have been if testing was easily available, plus getting a positive test confirmed within 5 days of onset would make one eligible & likely to benefit from Paxlovid. Without sufficient testing, a lot of vulnerable people missed the opportunity to use those life-saving therapeutics. I understand we are now far better prepared, having built up a store of testing supplies and antivirals. If we were to have gone through the Omicron wave with the higher stores of tests and therapeutics, the deaths would have presumably been a lot lower than 180,000. Hard to know for sure, but it does seem like we would have been able to manage the number of deaths much closer to a bad flu season. It does seem like we are getting there (getting towards the level of the flu), if only we don’t get a Worse variant (
).
1 Like
I recently visited the largest mall in my state (GA) to pick up something that I ordered on-line and it was so crowded… I already knew that life had gotten back to “normal” in my area, but it seemed even more crowded than I remembered. The Apple Store in the mall is what really caught my eye because it was completely stuffed with mostly teenagers and young adults and there were very few people masking throughout the mall (I would say less than 25%). I can say without a doubt that most people in my area are definitely done with Covid and we will see what that means for overall infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, but my county’s current low case rate (28 per 100,000) and percentage testing positive (1.5) despite lower levels of mask usage gives me some hope that we have some level of herd immunity happening in my community.
2 Likes
Our Reproductive Rate 2 weeks ago was 0.74. Last week it jumped to 2.53.
Daily new cases jumped from 315/day 2 weeks ago to 2,592/day last week.
Looks like we’re starting the next wave, hoping for it to be mild in severity.
I feel like every “expert” I’ve heard has been anticipating some sort of bump up of infections from BA2, but just nothing at all like the original massive omicron wave. Here’s hoping that’s the case (AND that people take better advantage of the therapeutics available now so that there is even less of a connection between infections and severe illness/death.
So far in my state, until about 10 days ago we were in steady decline. We are in the Northeast, which has been experiencing BA2 for a while now. Since then we’ve been holding steady, some days up a little bit, some days down, but the decline has certainly ended for now and we may be about to see a bump up. But this has been MUCH slower to happen given that masks have been off for about 6 weeks and gatherings have been full speed, etc. There has not been an obvious uptick due to behavior changes. I do think the higher transmissibility of BA2 will eventually lead to a small surge. Next 2 weeks will be telling!!
3 Likes
Can you please give more details or a link to the data that you shared? The data you shared had an 8-fold increase (315 new cases per day to 2592 new cases per day) in Covid cases in a 1 week period when the national average has basically been flat (7 day averages around 30K cases per day) over the last couple of weeks. I have seen some data reporting lags that have caused some large swings, but nothing like the numbers you shared. Different regions are seeing this next wave/bump at different speeds and my particular county still saw a small decrease in cases last week but some areas where the BA.2 variant has already become the dominant variant strain are already seeing increases in case rates.
Currently, the hospitalization and ICU rates are about as low at any point during the pandemic (numbers similar to last summer right before the Delta variant hit) but they alway lag behind case increases so I am just watching for the latest trends.
1 Like
1 Like
I was just thinking about this. If the above numbers are unique to Houston, is there something unique that happened in the area at that time? The answer is yes. Several million attended the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (an unknown number would be repeat attendees over the multiple day event). If the jump can be attributed to that, it shows what happens when public health measures such as social distancing and masking are ignored.
1 Like
Something is definitely happening that is different in the Houston metro area. Harris, Montgomery, and Liberty counties have case rates 5 to 10 times higher than any county in my similarly sized metro area (Atlanta). The other thing to worry about is that massive eight-fold 1 week jump which was the biggest of the entire pandemic in the Houston metro area (previous biggest jump was several 3-fold jumps in the new daily cases). I would venture to say that the Houston metro area may currently have the worst overall Covid data of any very large (top 10) metropolitan area in the US. Thanks for the link as I will definitely be looking at it again in 2-3 weeks to see where the hospitalizations are.
1 Like
Yes, the Rodeo and the tens of thousands at the concerts every night, along with Spring break, undoubtedly contributed. Vast numbers of children attend the Rodeo as well, so it probably has an even higher than average unvaxxed rate ( which is already high )
2 Likes
Here you go…
The Houston Chronicle (3/28, Gill) reports “a massive spike in the number of positive COVID cases last week in the Houston area” is “related to a reporting lag, not an enormous increase in the number of new infections.” Texas Department of State Health Services officials “said a Houston-area lab last week reported more than 9,000 old cases dating back to Jan. 1,” leading “to an outsized number of cases reported March 22 to March 25, which caused other Texas Medical Center metrics…to surge.”
8 Likes
That’s what happened in Maine. We looked bad for a lot longer than we should have due to the huge backlog.
1 Like
Wow, that was a huge reporting backlog. If those 9,000 cases were removed, Houston still had a large increase in case rates, but just not the unbelievable increase showed in the report. Thank you for looking further into the data.
1 Like