Average number of cases per day Dec. 19-25, 201,330.
Average number of hospitalizations, 70,950. One-two week interval between + and hospitalization.
Average number of deaths 1,345. Three-four week interval between + and death.
#Updated in penultimate paragraph.
*Updated. Dr. Fauci said today that the latest (still early) studies from the British Isles are consistent with the earliest reporting from South Africa that Omicron results in less serious infection even as it is much more contagious than Delta and other iterations. The graphs above add weight to both assessments. Even anticipating the death interval as this immense mountain of cases moves through it is impossible to see the death number increase from 4% to 69% as the case number did from two weeks ago; impossible to see the hospitalization rate rise from 9% to 69%. Fauci urged Americans not to be complacent about Omicron since we still have a low relative vaccination rate. "Death is different" is the mantra in criminal capital litigation and in coronavirus infection. All of the data are aligning to make Omicron a less deadly wave and that is the best news.
However. But. COVID-19 has always been a Janus-faced coin that is twinned with the economy. This data is in no way "good". An average of 201,330 cases/day over seven days is the highest number since the first week of the Biden administration. Over 1.4M newly-infected people in the last week. That causes a horrible chain reaction in all facets of the broadest meaning of "the economy." We see this most prominently in sports. Players are employees, when they test positive, per their CBA's, they have to sit out. The performance of the team suffers, the games become less "meaningful." Translated into broader market terminology, sports ticket buyers are consumers who are paying the same price for a lesser product. What is that? Inflation. Workers who are sick or even asym but + have to leave the work force temporarily to avoid spreading the virus to other employees. That is a brown increase in unwmployment. That lessens productivity. The result there is inflation too, less profitable businesses, lesser paychecks for workeea. The supply chains in various industries—timber, microchips, used cars—are disrupted again. Shortages develop because the workees are not workinf, prices continue "artificially" (artificial is the new normal) high; in the worst case products are simply unavailable at any price immediately (try buying a house). Inflation again; lower business profits again.
There are still shortages of workers. 815,000 Americans in a little under two years have been removed from the workforce permanently: they died. Over 52M Americans, I assume on good evidence the majority of working age, have been infected. Testing has lagged so poorly in the U.S. because of the dereliction of both the Trump and Biden administrations that almost every single one of those 52M "cases" means 52M Americans tested positive only when they got sick. Virtually all missed time from work; all had their productivity suffer to some degree, contributing to a decline in the productivity of the businesses they worked for, leading to worker shortages and lower take-home pay.
For the workers personally the Trump and Biden stimulus checks and unemployment benefit extensions eased the personal financial toll without doubt. But some workers, like me, sorta voluntarily sorta not, left the workforce entirely and at best are living on reduced, fixed incomes. The most vulnerable to economic jolts, the hourly employees, have seen missed paychecks or paycheck reductions. For them and for others on salary in their prime working years and with families the toll of sickness has been calamitous.
President Trump did all he could to ease the financial plight on families and get the economy moving again. Typical of a Republican he ignored the sickness and death, modeled non-compliance with masking, “understood” vaccine resistance, traded workplace normalcy for health and got neither, as was destined to happen.
President Biden took advantage of President Trump's superb-ish vaccines when they became available and saw clearly the inseparable interrelation between virus and economy. Biden had coronavirus beat and the economy was roaring back! He was America's greatest president over his first 100 days.
How this man, who never loses track of the virus' death toll, keeping in his pocket an up-to-date number of fatalities, how he of all presidents could let the scientific community go dark at the very dawn of the Delta variant; how he did not increase America's testing capacity in those early, rosy days; how he did not anticipate new mutations and track the virus as closely as an obsessed stalker, knowing that the virus is faster, quicker--simply better--than we are, knowing that vaccine efficacy was waning; how he could not order new vaccines to prevent
infection, the "ish" suffix to superb above
# "A growing body of preliminary research suggests...only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections...
The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection with every variant" ; and knowing that the economy and the virus are Siamese twins, that when one is healthy the other will be, but when one is sick, the other will be too--all of these are questions to which there can be no satisfactory answers given by Joe Biden on Judgment Day to history and to historians.
The indispensable ally of the cornavirus is time. Two presidents have let it run amok and continue to mutate. Omicron is flawed; the coronavirus fucked up in rolling out a new model that increased transmissibility but decreased lethality. It won't make that mistake again. We are, as we always have been, running so far behind the virus that we are choking on its fumes. The next variant, whatever the next fucking letter in the Greek alphabet is, Pi, will correct this design flaw in Omicron and graft speed of transmission onto vaccine evasion onto lethality. Pi, or whatever they call it, will be the Doomsday Variant. And, as always, we are unprepared.
