Thursday Reads

In a Deep Dark December, by Stephen Keller

Good Afternoon!!

We can soon bid farewell to 2021. The past two years have been awful, thanks to Trump and Covid-19. Will 2022 be any better? We can only hope. For now, the new Omicron variant is infecting more people than ever before.

The New York Times: The U.S. breaks its single-day case record, nearly doubling the highest numbers from last winter.

With a caseload nearly twice that of the worst days last winter, the United States shattered its record for new daily coronavirus cases, a milestone that may not adequately illustrate the rapid spread of the Delta and Omicron variants because testing has slowed over the holidays.

As a second year of living with the pandemic was drawing to a close, the new daily case total topped 488,000 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database. (The total was higher on Monday, but that number should not be considered a record because it included data from the long holiday weekend.)

Wednesday’s seven-day average of new daily cases, 301,000, was also a record, compared with 267,000 the day before, according to the database. In the past week, more than two million cases have been reported nationally, and 15 states and territories reported more cases than in any other seven-day period.

The rise in cases has been driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, which became dominant in the United States as of last week. So far, however, those increased cases have not resulted in more severe disease, as hospitalizations have increased only 11 percent and deaths have decreased slightly in the past two weeks.

Because Covid tests have been in short supply over the holidays, Wednesday’s numbers still may not fully illustrate the havoc caused by the two variants, which have sent caseloads soaring and have worsened a labor shortage, upending the hospitality, medical and travel industries, among others.

December, by Hans Baluschek

Demand for tests has outstripped supply, particularly in the last month as the Omicron variant has spread at an astonishing speed. And the holiday season offers its own disruptions to the U.S. case curve, with many testing sites offering limited hours and labs and government offices not open to report test results.

Last year, the national case curve showed pronounced declines after Thanksgiving and Christmas that did not reflect real decreases in new infections. The impact of holidays may be even more noticeable this time around, as illustrated by the Labor Day holiday in September, because states are reporting data less consistently than they did a year ago.

Head over to the NYT if you want more details.

Massachusetts is one of the most highly vaccinated states, but case numbers here are hitting record highs. CBS Boston: Massachusetts Reports New Single Day Record Of 15,163 COVID Cases, Positivity Rate Also Hits New High.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported 15,163 new confirmed COVID cases on Wednesday, a new single day record. The previous record was set last week when the state reported 10,040 new cases on Christmas Eve.

As of Wednesday, the seven-day weighted average of positive tests in Massachusetts had also increased to 13.58%, also a new record high.

There were also 45 additional deaths reported Wednesday.

Health officials said the total number of confirmed cases in the state is now 1,017,429. The total number of confirmed deaths is now 19,737.

There were 91,974 total new tests reported.

There are 1,711 people currently hospitalized for a coronavirus-related illness.

There are also 392 patients currently in intensive care.

Governor Baker plans to speak about the crisis later today. It’s happening everywhere.

According to an expert quoted in this article at The Washington Post, most people are probably going to get the virus eventually. We just have to hope the vaccinations protect us from serious illness and death.

Across the nation and the world, people who thought they knew how to avoid covid are getting a rude surprise. Safety precautions that had for so long felt talismanic ― get vaccinated, mask up, avoid large indoor gatherings — have in the past week or two collapsed under the weight of omicron, a much more highly transmissible variant than the ones before it.

Dark December Day, Eileen Ziegler

Schools and colleges returned to virtual learning. Flights were canceled as airline staff caught the virus. Long-anticipated holiday plans fell apart as people — young and old, vaccinated and unvaccinated — tested positive right and left. Those with negative tests worried it was only a matter of time.

They are likely right, according to Robert Frenck, professor of pediatrics and director of the Vaccine Research Center at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. “You know what? You’re probably going to get covid,” he said, but if you have been vaccinated you are unlikely to become seriously ill.

Instead of thinking they lost the race against the virus, Frenck encouraged people to redefine their concept of winning. “It’s not that you failed,” he said. “You actually succeeded. You dodged the bullet. … What are people trying to prevent? Are we trying to prevent the common cold? Nobody’s going to do that. You’ve gotten your booster, you’ve done everything, and you still get covid, but how sick did you get?”

For most infected people with vaccines, he said, “What they’re having is a cold.”

People misunderstand what the vaccine is designed to do, Frenck said, adding that unvaccinated people are dying at a rate 20 times higher than people who are vaccinated and boosted. “Vaccines are going to stop people from being hospitalized and from ending up in the ICU and from dying,” he said. “This is nature saying, it hasn’t gone away now, and we need to go out and get vaccinated.”

Vaccinated people are dying from breakthrough cases though. Here are the latest numbers from Massachusetts: 20,247 New Breakthrough Cases in Mass., 70 More Deaths in Vaccinated People.

Massachusetts health officials on Tuesday reported more than 20,000 new breakthrough COVID cases over the past week and 70 more deaths.

In the last week, 20,247 new breakthrough cases — infections in people who have been vaccinated — were reported, with 353 more vaccinated people hospitalized, Massachusetts Department of Public Health officials said Tuesday. It’s a 45% increase in the rate of new breakthrough cases in Massachusetts — last week saw 13,919 new COVID infections in vaccinated people — but a decrease in the number of deaths among vaccinated people.

The new report brings the total number of breakthrough cases to 134,565, and the death toll among people with breakthrough infections to 854.

Both figures remain a tiny percentage of the total number of all people who have been vaccinated.

Yes, the numbers are relatively small, but I wonder how many people who died are in my elderly age group?

The Washington Post reports that Coronavirus risk calculations get harder as a study suggests rapid tests may be less effective at detecting omicron.

As the coronavirus spawns a record-breaking wave of infections, new research suggests that rapid tests widely used to identify potential covid-19 cases might be less effective at identifying illness caused by the swiftly spreading omicron variant.

Country Lane in Winter, by Stuart Black

The finding is the latest complication for anyone trying to strike a common-sense balance between being vigilant and returning to normalcy as the country approaches the third year of the pandemic.

The research, issued Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration and produced by the National Institutes of Health, said the rapid antigen tests — which have been in high demand and often hard to find this holiday season — “do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.”

Although rapid tests showed reduced sensitivity to omicron compared with earlier variants in a lab study, the real-world implications are not clear and are still under investigation, said Bruce J. Tromberg, director of NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and lead of RADx Tech, an effort to assess and speed up the development of tests in cooperation with the FDA. The findings do not necessarily mean the tests will be less sensitive in the real world.