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Number of people hospitalized for Covid-19 in Massachusetts exceeds 1,000 for first time since February
By adamg on Fri, 12/03/2021 - 10:15pm
Massachusetts today reported 1,003 state residents hospitalized with Covid-19, the first time the state has broken 1,000 since the tail end of the last major spike, on Feb. 17.
Today's numbers were up 10.7% just from Monday.
The number of patient in intensive care and on ventilators, like the overall number of people in hospitals, is also increasing. However, the numbers are lower than they were on Feb. 17. That day, there were 271 patients in ICUs, compared to 191 yesterday - no numbers for today. There were 173 patients on ventilators on Feb. 17, versus 109 today.
Counts of Covid-19 viral particles at the Deer Island sewage-treatment plant - a potential indicator of diagnosed cases seven to ten days out - reached a peak on Wednesday near the peak that proceeded the worst of the spike this past winter.
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Comments
Not good
We vaccinated (by and large.)
We did what we were supposed to do.
If I say it was all for naught, people more learned than me will interject, but at the end of the day, it feels like it was all for naught.
Not for naught
The case fatality rates has fallen significantly for those who are vaccinated. We haven’t ended the pandemic, but maybe it was hubris to ever imagine we could.* At this point two years in you get boosted, wear your mask, be confident that you’re doing the best you can to protect yourself and your family.
*Speaking of big scary crises, if we can’t handle a global crisis like COVID, we probably can’t handle a global crisis like global warming, can we?
"if we can’t handle a global crisis like COVID"
You know adversarial countries like China & Russia are pointing to the US and saying things like "Look at the US, they can't even unite to fight a virus so how do you think they would unite to oppose us?" in their propaganda.
It's one of countless dark ironies about the GOP/Trump faction that they talked endlessly about how Obama made us "look weak" while they constantly engage in behavior or talk in ways which do that far more than the 44th president ever did.
Well
China and Russia have invested tremendous resources in American propaganda and disinformation and have gotten very good at it.
My armchair philosophizing is that America today is the product of 50 years of defunding and attacking public education.
Shouldn't then Russian and
Shouldn't then Russian and Chinese meddling be highlighted in our public school curriculum? Is it even ever mentioned?
Let’s start with teaching
Let’s start with teaching about America’s “meddling” in countries around the world for the last 70 years.
If we can’t handle a global
Define "handle". One way to handle COVID is by not handling it. Everyone gets exposed. The country's population continues to increase.
Indeed
And people that you don't care about die. Perfect!
the data does not support
the data does not support your assertion.
Nope
Click on the link, and go to the hospitalizations tab. February 17 was the last day where it was over a thousand until the latest report.
You may be looking at the 7 day average, which has only 886.1 hospitalized. Of all the data, hospitalizations are the worst to average. A death reported today could have happened a week ago. A positive test reported today could be from a few days ago (and there are less tests on the weekends, too boot.) That affects positive numbers and positive test rates. Hospitalizations are pretty cut and dry.
Wastewater..
A bit scary given the vax rates…It’s essentially the same set of people producing that wastewater as last year. Testing and cases and hospitalizations might be selected towards unvaxxed, but not the sewage??
Not necessarily
If you look at the latest state vaccination figures, from today, there are more than 2 million people in Massachusetts who have yet to get fully vaccinated (with the caveat that that includes children who only recently became eligible or who remain uneligible for shots).
So that still leaves a ton of people to get fully infected and, um, excrete RNA particles every time they flush.
The unvaccinated and the partially vaccinated are far more likely to develop Covid-19 than the fully vaccinated, because even with all the talk of breakthrough cases, the vaccines do stop infection in most fully vaccinated people (the worrisome thing, of course, is that breakthrough cases mean somebody might become infectious even if their symptoms are mild).
So the sewage is telling us what will happen overall in a week or so, but we'd have to look elsewhere to determine the percentages of cases among vaccinated people and whether we should just throw our hands up or whether we should redouble (retriple, even?) efforts to get more people vaccinated.
Also need to consider MWRA demographics
I think it's worth noting that you need a bit of caution when using wastewater data from MWRA as a representation of what's going on in the state. The demographics related to areas served by MWRA and the corresponding vaccination rate are going to be very different than the redder parts of the state like south of Worcester.
It's still a good piece of information to assess what might be coming, but it should be taken in context.
Except MWRA doesn’t service all of MA
Saying there are 2M people in MA that still need to be vaccinated and omitting the fact that MWRA only services 43% of MA is disingenuous. Also, MWRA services a lot more blue towns than red so I’d venture to guess the vax rate is much higher than the statewide ~70%. All in all, bad news, but get the damn vaccine already people!
The relation between the
The relation between the wastewater levels and the hospitalizations, before and after vax, seems to be the same, roughly speaking. Bummer.
The one potential positive takeaway is there are virtually no restrictions vs last year and a lot of previously cautious people are somewhat returning to life as normal, including in person learning at school and family gatherings for Thanksgiving. So, if you need to believe in something, perhaps the wastewater levels would be a lot higher without vax?
Yes
Because of the vaccines, we've been able to resume a fairly normal life, because we have significantly reduced risks. Seeing what we are seeing now, it's very plausible that if we were trying to live a year ago the way we are going about right now, we would have to change the scale on last years data to be able to fit it onto the chart.
If all you look at is cases or deaths and say "we vaccinated 'everyone' but the numbers are the same" ignores all of the other variables we've changed over the past 12 months.