Covid Exposure. Sympathy and Frustration.

Yesterday I learned that one of the friends we had in our house on Sunday tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday.

My immediate reaction was one of sympathy; sympathy for the person who tested positive, particularly as his health situation puts him at high risk. While Covid has been "like a bad cold" for many people who've gotten it during the past 5 months with the dominant Omicron strain, for him it's more likely to be a major illness.

My second reaction was concern; concern for myself and Hawk. We tested ourselves Monday evening. Both our tests were negative. We'll continue to watch for symptoms, and we'll test again on Thursday even if no symptoms have appeared.

BTW, looking up the latest guidance on what to do after an exposure was ridiculous. The CDC has a nice guide online for people in healthcare (as either workers or patients) but not for the general public. This extends my frustration about how the current administration has failed to articulate clear recommendations to counter the daily onslaught of misrepresentations and lies from the denialist right.

Our real frustration, though, isn't with the lack of clear government guidance. It's with our friend who got sick. Our immediate feelings of sympathy wore off as we considered how he got sick, Likely it's from him going to a casino all day long earlier in the week. A casino where lots of random people are clustered together, with essentially zero masking, drinking and talking loudly. That's frustrating to us because our personal rules for whom we associate with unmasked, particularly who we invite into our house, are 1) up to date on Covid vaccinations, and 2) no recent high-risk behavior, particularly attending crowded indoors unmasked hours-long gatherings. Our friend violated our house rule #2 and didn't tell us until after.

Case Rates Continue to Climb, Are Harder to Track

It's Tier Tuesday so time for my weekly check-in on Coronavirus statistics. This week's check of the data at The New York Times Covid in the U.S. (retrieved 3 May 2022) shows the 7-day average number as of Monday was 60,953, vs. the previous Monday's average of 49,175. That's a 24% increase in average daily reported cases.

This week's increase is a continuation of the trend of increases over the past few weeks. This week's increase of 24% is similar to last week's growth of 26% over the previous week. Similarly, 2 weeks ago there was a 21.5% increase over 3 weeks ago.

In some of my past Tier Tuesday posts I've compared the latest case rates to the rates we saw prior to the Omicron surge and in last summer's lull prior to the Delta surge. Such comparisons need to come with a major caveat. Case rates today look artificially low compared to past figures because nowadays many cases are not reported to the government health authorities. The rise in availability of at-home tests this year, coupled with people experiencing milder symptoms from the Omicron strain prevalent since December, means that fewer and fewer people who need tests go to clinics for them. Clinics are where reporting to county, then state, then national health agencies, occurs. At-home tests occur off the radar screen. Thus, while this week's average daily new case count of 60,953 seems "only" 5x higher than last summer's June lows of less than 12,000— of course, even 5x is bad— the reality is that today's figure could be double that (ie, 10x) or more due to unreported positive results.

The data that are more comparable now vs. 5+ months ago are hospitalizations and deaths. In recent weeks hospitalizations have been ticking up in tandem with reported new cases. That's not surprising. The death rate continues declining from the winter's astonishing peak. That's also not surprising, as deaths are a trailing indicator. Case rates have been increasing for only the past 3-4 weeks. Deaths will probably start to increase soon. Compared to last year, the recent hospitalization rate is only slightly higher than last June's summer lull. Ditto the death rate. These make sense as while there are significantly more cases now, the dominant Omicron strain produces less severe illness.