The year in Covid

A few numbers:

Total Covid deaths in the USA in 2023: About 72,000. This represents about 6.2% of all official Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic (1,163,000). I suspect the true number of total Covid deaths is probably around 1.5 million, because of chronic under-reporting. At least that’s what the excess death figures over the past four years tend to indicate.

Percent of the adult population that is up to date on Covid vaccinations: About 17%. It’s under 10% in most of the Deep South and Texas.

Emergency room visits and hospitalizations are trending up, as one would expect entering the peak Covid season of December-February.

I’m struck by the remarkable extent to which people are treating Covid as simply not something that’s happening any more, when four years ago the numbers I’m quoting for 2023 would have been considered a public health emergency of the first order. Yet people are constantly testing positive, which leads the more scrupulous ones to have to miss work and school, as well as many other important things (A couple I know just had to cancel an elaborate overseas vacation that they had spent years planning).

This is pretty much the standard pattern, in regard to how epidemics/pandemics disappear socially before they disappear epidemiologically, but it’s still remarkable to witness.

Nearly four years into this now, it seems to me that by far the biggest two long term consequences for society will turn out to be a significant shift toward working from home, although of course lots of employers are trying to claw that back, and the emergence of a mass right wing anti-vax movement, with plenty of fascistic overtones, because Trumplandia.