Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Let’s finish the job.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

He really is that stupid.

Let there be snark.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: April 3, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: April 3, 2024

by | 31 Comments

This post is in: ,

2) Covid fell from the 3rd leading cause of death in 2021 to 10th in 2023. Things ARE objectively better. And we have to also focus on the other top 9 causes of death (eg opioid overdoses, heart disease, cancer).

3) We’ve seen a 75% decrease in hospitalizations compared to March 2022. That’s good.👍🏽

4) Most hospitalizations now in age > 64. Too many seniors are not “up to date,” and/or don’t get Paxlovid after testing positive.

Even GBD advocates for vaccines/ protection for elderly.🤷🏽‍♂️

5) For those under 64, obesity is the biggest risk factor for hospitalization and death. 66% of U.S. is overweight or obese, including most children. It’s why if you feel we should focus only on “high risk,” you must also acknowledge how many ARE at higher risk. 🤔

6) Some estimates are that as high as 14% of US population currently has covid at any given time (i.e. Prevalence).

7) Still 567 deaths weekly from covid. Many (if not most) are preventable, with vaccines and treatment. In theory we have the tools, but we aren’t using them.🤦🏽‍♂️

8) Up to 20% of US population has experienced “long covid.”

This = ⬆️ societal healthcare and economic (eg workforce) costs. And by definition, this number will keep going up. We ignore this at our peril.

It’s why we simply can’t pretend Covid is “over.”

Good news?
-Fewer (but still too many) hospitalized or dying.
-We have great tools to lower morbidity and mortality, and we know who needs them- we just have to choose (as a society/ govt and as individuals) to use them.

Let stop fighting each other, and fight the virus.

Spring & Summer Thoughts
I expect the U.S. to bounce around between 400,000-600,000 daily infections/day through late July, so my behavior won’t particularly vary the next several months. May may be a little higher than April, June and early July, but the models are less precise outside of the 2-4 week window. If a family member were considering when to have a medical appointment in the next 4 months, I’d consider the date mostly arbitrary, as the precautions used would account for much more variance in risk. Based on historical data, transmission is anticipated to shoot up quickly in August, if nothing unforeseen happens regarding viral evolution, vaccines, or treatments.

When Will Transmission be Lowest?
As noted above, this is somewhat arbitrary because transmission rates will bounce around a bit the next few months. There are 3 likely options: 1) We’ve recently passed the low point of transmission for 2024 (composite forecasting model), 2) we’re about to hit the lowest transmission (turtle model, which discounts Biobot’s most recent real-time data as too inaccurate to utilize), 3) in June after rebounding from May.

Full Report:
http://pmc19.com/data

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Japan:

England:

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Gift link:

… The team found that when SARS-CoV-2 infects its first-phase targets, cells in the lining of the lung, two viral proteins circulate within those cells—one that works to activate the immune system and a second that, paradoxically, blocks that signal, resulting in little or no inflammation.

The team also discovered a second pathway the virus sometimes takes to enter immune cells. This alternative pathway both stunts the virus’s ability to reproduce and prevents the production of the second immune signal-braking protein. The first protein is then able to spur rampant inflammation linked to severe symptoms.

“There are two stages that work through different signaling pathways,” said Rongfu Wang, Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “With the normal pathway, everything goes normally, and the virus replicates. When the immune cells pick up the virus, replication is defective, but it produces a lot of inflammatory signaling molecules called cytokines.”…

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Reader Interactions

31Comments

  1. 1.

    Matt McIrvin

    1) 95% of current covid hospitalizations are in people who are not up to date on their vaccinations. So especially if you or a loved one is in a higher risk group, please consider a vaccine or boost.

    I was worried about how poisoned this number is by the base rate fallacy–what fraction of Americans are up to date on their vaccinations? Consider the extreme case where it’s 5%, then this number means nothing.

    It’s not quite that bad, though (CDC page on vax statistics):
    https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/vaccination-trends-adults.html

    They say it’s about 14% among all adults and 42% among adults age 65+, and I’m guessing 65+ are probably the bulk of the people who end up in the hospital.

    Though it’s also going to depend on the time of the year. Right now, they’re recommending a spring booster for 65+ adults, so most of them are probably technically not up to date unless they ran out and got that already. And it still annoys me a bit that the only reason I AM “up to date” is that I’m not old enough to be in the group with a 6-month booster recommendation from the CDC.

  2. 2.

    Matt McIrvin

    As for “are you better off four years ago?” we have to remember that four years ago, spring 2020, the majority of the people who were dying were blue-staters and Democratic constituencies, not Red Americans.

    The people who are nostalgic for that may think that kind of plague was the good old days. They’re not delusional, just genocidal.

  3. 3.

    New Deal democrat

    The latest variant update from the CDC last Friday shows that JN.1 and its subvariants continue to make up over 98% of all cases, with no new variants on the horizon. The wastewater updates from both Biobot and the CDC released within the last few days show continued declines, the former by almost 75% from its Holiday peak to the lowest level since the end of last July, the latter by 85% from its Holiday peak also to the lowest level since late last July.

    The trends in COVID hospitalizations and deaths also continue to be excellent. Hospitalizations for the week of March 23 were 9,345, an almost 75% decline from their Holiday peak, and the lowest of the entire pandemic except for last May through July. Deaths through the week of March 2 were 1,164, a 60% decline from their Holiday peak, and the lowest level of the entire pandemic except for the end of last April through the end of last July.

    If hospitalizations and deaths decline 85% from their Holiday peak, as wastewater particles have, that would put us at about 5,400 hospitalizations and 400 deaths by the end of April, both the lowest weekly number ever recorded during the pandemic.

    As of March 31 we will be 4 full years into the pandemic in terms of collected data. Although there are 4 weeks left for death data to be complete, it looks like the cumulative number for the past year will be about 65,000, vs. 560,000 for year one, 435,000 for year two, and 130,000 for year three. If there is a comparable decline in the coming year, that really would put us on par with an average flu year. Something like 75% of all deaths remain among the elderly, so seniors still need to take some precautions.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Noticed in the closing credits of a Canadian series the addition of “COVID-19 Supervisor.” Couple of minutes of online detective work turned up an item of passing interest about that: they’re talkinmg in the video about season 14 which first aired in 2021, so filming took place in 2020. Truncated season, it has the fewest episodes (11) of any season to date (original broadcast in Canada of season 17 (24 eps) wraps up next week).

  5. 5.

    Princess

    I wonder if JN.1 is going to be a game changer in terms of variants. It is SO contagious (ask me how I know). Maybe it has driven all other variants out so anything new will be descended from it.

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Far-UVC light can virtually eliminate airborne virus in an occupied room, study shows

    Causes blindness AND destroys brain cells!

    Just getting ahead of the inevitable Qonspiracy.

    eta: Why is Ladapo still a doctor?

  8. 8.

    lowtechcyclist

    Couldn’t help but notice that BNO News says there were 1202 Covid deaths last week, while Jerome Adams says there are 567 Covid deaths weekly now. That’s quite a gap.

  9. 9.

    Ohio Mom

    I am wondering about eclipse travel. For one example, Wapakoneta Ohio, which will be in the totalty, doesn’t even have a population of 10,000 and they say they expecting 100,000 visitors (it’s Neil Amstrong’s birthplace, they have a space museum, and are really playing up that angle with all sorts of eclipse-related festivities).

    Multiply that by all the other places in the totality all over the country that are expecting big crowds, and it’s a great opportunity for all sorts of viruses to spread and mix it up.

    I’m remembering the first weeks every fall of Ohio Son’s elementary school years where everyone returning from their summer adventures brought new pathogens to share. A couple of weeks into the semester and it seemed everyone had a head cold (I don’t remember a similar occurrence in my youth but people didn’t travel so much then, we stayed home in the Bronx).

    And now I remember I wanted Ohio Dad and me to get our boosters before next Monday for just that reason and time got away from me.

    We are planning to drive not quite an hour northwest to a little country cemetery. The idea of sharing those few minutes of darkness with a loud crowd of strangers has no appeal to me. I don’t want to hear someone playing “Total Eclipse of the Sun,” and hooting and hollering. Shudder.

  10. 10.

    New Deal democrat

    @lowtechcyclist: Deaths are only estimated for the last three weeks. BNO seems to be arriving at its number by subtracting the number of cumulative deaths one week ago vs. this week. In other words, the change in the three week preliminary total week over week.

    Adams appears to be averaging the last two or three weeks of the preliminary numbers. In my comment above, I stick with the last “final” number, from four weeks ago.

    Deaths are way down compared with any other time during the pandemic except for last May-July, despite BNO’s apparent alarmism.

  14. 14.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: I heard a Republican on Bill Maher touting the “are you better off now than 4 years ago” thing, and when the panelists corrected her by saying “4 years ago we were all at home because of a plague” she then said “Ok, so in 2018 were you better off?”. I think they’re counting on people thinking 4 years ago was 2019 or 2018. Too many people seem to believe that if TFG gets elected, somehow magically all the prices in the stores and rent and gas will go back to what they were in 2019.

  15. 15.

    TBone

    Was finally feeling well enough to get to the CVS and get boosted with the updated ’23-’24 vax yesterday.  Sore arm and mild fatigue and achiness – it’s working.  Last boosted in early November.  Thankfully, the shot is still free for both Hubby and I (covered by insurance and Medicare).

    Thanks for staying on top of this AL!

  17. 17.

    TBone

    I think that article in the Texas Observer should be on the front page of every newspaper and website in the nation so people will actually see it and may actually READ it.  I’ve stopped sharing information with my friends and relatives because no one cares anymore.  No one ever reads or responds, so what’s the point.

    He stressed that people underestimate the risk of COVID infections in general and, more specifically, the risk of repeated reinfection. Even mild cases can lead to long COVID, especially if it isn’t the first time a person has become sick. One study from Statistics Canada found that around 15 percent of people reported having persistent symptoms after their first infection. That number approaches 40 percent after the third and subsequent infections.

  18. 18.

    TBone

    @TBone: not alone just lonely

    When everyone around you is living in a different reality where COVID is over or COVID is mild, you feel a little bit like you’re losing your mind,” they said. “I don’t feel like I’m part of those communities anymore because they refuse to accommodate [this illness].”

  19. 19.

    Kristine

    @TBone: Same for me. Boosted last week with Moderna. Felt mildly rundown for a day or so—the sore arm was the worst of it. Given what I went through when I got a triple-pack last October (COVID/RSV/Flu. I think the RSV is what slammed me), I was relieved.

  20. 20.

    bluefoot

    @TBone: ​
      Anecdote: Someone I know who had a mild case of COVID a year ago developed long COVID, including some sort of neurological autoimmune condition. They recently died from it. I know quite a few people with long term cardiac conditions from COVID, all younger than 45 and in previous good health.

    I get that people want this to be “over” but it’s really not. If we improved infrastructure – improved indoor air quality, etc. we could decrease the chance of infection by a lot. Not just COVID.

  21. 21.

    TBone

    @bluefoot:  I am so sorry. I too am constantly frustrated with the “it’s no big deal” prevailing attitude I encounter absolutely everywhere.  We need to do better, especially for our young people.  This is deadly serious but it’s no longer acceptable to speak about it in polite company (you’re nuts, you’re exaggerating, you’re faking, you’re lazy, you’re a hypochondriac, etc.) Grrrrrrrrrrrr

    I wanted to go to a new church nearby where everyone looks like friendly hippies and there are Pride flags on the lawn and solar panels on the roof.  But I can’t risk it because they dropped their masking policy 😔

  22. 22.

    TBone

    @Kristine: thanks for being on OUR team where we CARE about lessening the chances of spreading a deadly virus as well as preserving our own lives!

  23. 23.

    Torrey

    Since TBone and I are both Piet Hein fans, I’m going to celebrate my sore arm from yesterday’s booster by posting this verse. Unfortunately, it’s about dentistry rather than vaccines, but Hein didn’t write about vaccines and I’m gonna go with what I got.

    You sit in the chair with your mouth open wide,
    And the dentist has moved half his workshop inside,
    To gild you and glaze you and tin you.
    I admit, it is not my idea of a lark,
    But you must keep your skeleton up to the mark,
    As long as you’ve still got it in you.

    I suppose a better poet than I could come up with a modification that was about the immune system. Anyway, the principle is the same.​

  24. 24.

    Torrey

    @Torrey: ​
     
    Sorry for the double post, but I’ve found that trying to edit the comment plays merry havoc with the formatting. I just wanted to add that I chose this pharmacy because it was small, locally owned, and had a big sign on the door that said “Masks required.”

  26. 26.

    TBone

    Today I am cancelling my mammogram appointment because the masking policy in our entire medical community is CRAY CRAY. “You should wear a mask if you have Covid.” HOW ABOUT STAY THE FUCK HOME IF YOU HAVE COVID!?!!

  27. 27.

    Bill Arnold

    @TBone:

    This is deadly serious but it’s no longer acceptable to speak about it in polite company

    Willfully ignorant company. The considerable science on long covid/post-acute covid-19 sequelae, including active research, should not be ignored, or worse, cherry picked.
    I’ve given up on influencing the behavior of others, but wear a fit-tested N95 in enclosed spaces with more than one or two other persons. Do not care if I am the only one masked in the space; no reason to respect the opinions of those who feel their right to infect other people with infectious respiratory diseases means that other people who are wearing a mask are infringing on that right. (Though I do know somebody who lip-reads due to near-total hearing loss and accommodate.)
    “Fit-tested” mainly means a quick inhale; if the mask depresses due to the negative pressure, that’s good. Also, any airflow felt around the edges is bad. I reuse a N95 for a while, sometimes until a strap fails; newer is better, but fit (all air intake through the mask filter) is most important IMO.

    Best would be seriously improved indoor air quality standards including a push to seriously improve ventilation/filtration systems in existing buildings, and maybe those UV lights, though ionizing radiation should be suspected as harmful until proven innocent.

  28. 28.

    Mel

    @Ohio Mom: Oh, yes. It is going to be “interesting times”, for sure.
    We have the measles outbreaks, we’re just getting past the huge outbreak of atypical (mycoplasma) pneumonia in Southwestern Ohio, Covid, RSV snd strep are raging through nursing homes and schools still, we’re transporting in Texas cows infected with bird flu to complicate things even further for struggling family farms, and now we will have, added to the mix, the delightful smorgasbord of pathogens brought by thousands of unmasked eclipse tourists packing in to tiny towns that are completely unprepared for that kind of surge of humanity and all that comes with it.

    Ohio: America’s Petri Dish!

  29. 29.

    Mel

    @Bill Arnold: I have started using a sturdy bandage tape around the edges of my n95 if I am going to be in a high-risk environment. I sometimes have trouble getting a complete seal despite careful fitting, due to the fact that I’m a petite person with a somewhat narrow face, so that extra bit of security helps.

    I started doing that at the suggestion of a friend who is a nurse and who has also struggled to find n95s that sealed completely. Despite eye protection and a medical grade 3m n95, I caught RSV and atypical pneumonia after being in a medical facility filled with sick, coughing unmasked patients and employees last Fall,  so tape on the edges for me from here on out!

    You can’t really re-use a mask after using bandage tape along the edges, as removing the tape can damage the integrity of the mask, which is a shame, but after that hard lesson last Fall, tape ahoy for me.

  30. 30.

    Mel

    @TBone: Wow!!! It’s not like the techs aren’t getting up close and personal during the procedure, either.

    And who wants to be boob-clamped to a machine, inches away from the previous patient’s Covid cough effluvia on the surfaces, in the air, etc. while the tech exhorts you to “take  a deep breath and hold it in!”

  31. 31.

    Mel

    @TBone: This, absolutely. We are going to have a generation plus of young people damaged by both the long and short term effects of this awful virus. Neurological and cognitive damage / changes, stroke/clot /cardiac issues at young ages, early onset Parkinson’s and dementias, endocrine disorders, autoimmune disorders, etc.

    It is heartbreaking.

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