The COVID Digest, 15Jan2022

East coast peak?

We made it through another week! It’s currently snowing heavily in the Kansas City area and this snow storm is heading to the South. Hospitals are full throughout the country so please be safe.

Yesterday I did a roundup of the national statistics on Twitter and on the KU Hospital Morning Medical Update. Click on the thread below.

Amber Schmidtke, PhD @AmberSchmidtke

This morning I'm talking data once again on the @KUHospital Morning Medical Update. Most of these data come from the HHS Community Profile Report: beta.healthdata.gov/Health/COVID-1… Here's test positivity nationally. High test positivity means we're undercounting cases. 1/

In short, the entire country is on fire with COVID-19, hospitals everywhere are stressed, schools are pivoting to virtual learning due to staff illness. And people are saying that we need to move on, that COVID-19 doesn’t matter. We can say that COVID-19 doesn’t matter. But it clearly does or we wouldn’t see all of this disruption, we wouldn’t see hospitals begging people to stop transmission. Saying that Omicron is mild or that COVID-19 no longer matters during this wave is about as effective as shouting at a category 5 hurricane. Omicron is causing chaos. And viruses don’t care if we have “moved on.” Nevermind that “moving on” means indifference to ongoing pain and suffering. We either manage that chaos or Omicron will continue to cause escalating disruption.

A question many of us are wondering is when will this wave peak and begin to recede?