Michael Hobbes: Weekly COVID deaths are the lowest they've been since tracking started on March 14, 2020. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-t...

Weekly COVID deaths are the lowest they've been since tracking started on March 14, 2020. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-t...

This is my understanding too, long COVID has been steadily falling in prevalence and severity since the vaccine and booster rollouts. That’s not a lot of help for people still struggling with it though! bsky.app/profile/hype...

The data shows actually that the population wide rate of Long COVID is decreasing. That is based on the standard (wide) definition ie “any COVID symptom lasting longer than 3 months”.

Part of the problem is that the medical definition of Long COVID (having any symptom that lasts for more than 3 months) is very different from the popular definition (disablement). In the study I quote 6% of adults have Long COVID, but only 1/4 of those have significant activity limitations.

Yeah and the data’s almost a year old. Considering how much vaccines and boosters reduce risk I’d expect it’s fallen even more since then.

actually looks like it’s holding steady at 6-7%.

As Recommendations for Isolation End, How Common is Long COVID? | KFFwww.kff.org This issue brief analyzes the latest data on rates of long COVID, which have appeared to stabilize, affecting about 1 in 10 adults who have had COVID.

That's still a few million people 😔

There is a drop in reporting that is going to impact data collection. Primary care docs are seeing pts who home tested, got antivirals or not, and recovered at home. Those with chronic illness that is exacerbated by covid have it acknowledged but not reported because there is no treatment.

Docs shrug and say “Yeah, probably covid related”. Really severe long covid in previously healthy patients may be down, but long term chronic issues continue and appear even with vaccinations. Surveillance has just decreased.

Actually a lot of doctors flat out deny it.

Has there been any research into the time between infection, vaccination & the onset of possible Long Covid symptoms? Would the vaccine give you mitigation once the damage has started?

Anecdotally I’ve heard mixed reviews on that.

This is a tricky one. Vaccines and boosters have been curtailed hugely in many places (including the UK). We're also looking at an uptick in heart issues, strokes, autoimmunity and cancer in unusual cohorts. None of these will be listed as 'covid' deaths/ disability, but are directly tied to covid.

I think that’s the narrative, but the WHO & CDC still have messaging that there is still a high risk of persistent symptoms. At this point even if we eradicate deaths & long covid there are still millions of people domestically & potentially over a billion globally: hbr.org/2024/05/long...

Long Covid at Work: A Manager’s Guidehbr.org Nearly 18 million U.S. adults have long Covid, a multisystem illness that sometimes appears after a bout of Covid-19. Its wide range of symptoms vary from person to person, veer from mild to severe, a...

I don't understand this - does this mean that people's symptoms are healing? My sister's taste and smell never came back, and she went deaf in one ear from COVID. Can she expect that to improve?

There’s not enough time to know yet. Has she been able to access any specialized care at all? There’s no cures yet but some treatments —- all off label— do help with symptoms. Hers aren’t mine though. There are some smell retraining programs that folks have done for example .

I am not sure steadily falling prevalence (according to our most reliable metrics like wastewater surveillance) is the case, but certainly in severity on a population level as nearly everyone has some immunity now. (Of course, we are all getting older so individual level severity may increase.)

This isn't because of reporting requirements dropping off? (Honest question)

Nope, case data is all over the place but hospitals are still reporting deaths

Are they running PCR tests on everyone with respiratory problems or something? (This seems like a totally reasonable thing.)

I mean more than likely yes, it's an easy rule-out for treatments

You’re guessing.

My daughter had respiratory distress this week and the first thing they did was PCR covid/flu/RSV

Cool! Love to see the obvious, sensible thing being done.

I got admitted for a bad allergic reaction last summer and got swabbed. I think twice over the course of my week in the hospital. They're running plenty of tests. If you're in a hospital they know if you have covid or not.

That really depends on the hospital

Hereabouts they're basically Covid-testing as part of any admission, respiratory or no.

in my experience where I work, they are running PCR’s for anyone coming in with upper respiratory symptoms or who has had known/likely exposure

No, only when it’s indicated for Covid specifically

well yeah, if you’re here for a laceration they’re not going to swab you but if you’re presenting with viral symptoms they will swab. It’s very quick to run a flu, covid, RSV swab to rule them out.

That has not been my experience! Every hospital is different

Anecdotally. When my friend went in with a sore throat (she went in for other reasons) and asked to be tested as part of intake they said they didn’t test anymore. She asked and asked and gave up

In hospital testing is still the norm in all (most?) places. Isolation protocols are still a thing and minor outbreaks do occur.

It looks like the new system has a 1-8 week lag in death reporting, so we won’t have the real May numbers until August. Source: covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-t...

Didn’t they stop reporting Covid data on May 1? www.sfchronicle.com/health/artic...

California to stop posting weekly COVID hospitalization figures, leaving a data voidwww.sfchronicle.com California’s Department of Public Health will no longer provide weekly updates to the public on COVID-19 hospital admissions as the pandemic wanes.

That's hospitalization numbers, not deaths. Deaths from covid are still tracked.

The footnote on the CDC page reporting deaths says this

Unclear which page you got that from, but the cdc is still tracking covid deaths in all 50 states via death certificate. Previously, there was a separate reporting of just covid deaths/hospitializations/cases that ran on a different track than the death certificates.

A further footnote says that the recording of deaths is changing departments and there will be a 1-8 week delay in the numbers. So we won’t have accurate May numbers until August.

Oh yeah here’s the page. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-t...

COVID Data Trackercovid.cdc.gov CDC's home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

Here’s the part about the delay in reporting —

yeah it’s like the murder rate - police can play a lot of games with statistics but a dead body is hard to hide.

Can we rely on covid deaths being attributed to covid, though? It does make sense that covid deaths would decline over time - eventually the virus will reach most people more likely to catch it and die of it - but also lots of doctors arent interested in thinking about covid.

I’m sure there’s issues with cause of death classification, but that would have been true any time in the last 4 years, the real question is whether those classification issues have massively expanded recently. (I trust that’s clear).

I'm wondering if doctors are less likely to classify a covid death as such as each individual doctor considers it to be more "over" than it was before.

Are nursing homes reporting Covid deaths too? I can’t find the info.

For Covid *deaths*?

For all Covid. Now every entry there are those submitted manually.

bsky.app/profile/merz...

Not just in the US. Worldwide.

Not the same metric being discussed, and also weeks obsolete.

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