The 75+ age group now contribute 45% of Covid fatalities reported each week, down from 60% in December.
Oddly, the infection point in the curve landed 2 months before a significant portion of this group was protected by vaccine.
Perhaps we simply ran out of vulnerable elderly.
Each age group saw deaths peak in early January, meaning infections peaked in December - before any significant portion of the population had vaccine-induced immunity.
Also, note that the decline in elderly fatalities appears to have been arrested at ~245 deaths per day. It would be interesting to know how many of these 245 had been vaccinated but that information does not seem to be publicly available.
Conclusions: 1. Covid had already burned through this winter's available susceptible population prior to the introduction of vaccines 2. Covid has become a seasonal endemic virus and will never be fully eradicated 3. Those under 45, perhaps 55, were never at significant risk
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There are 243 million persons living in central East Africa and only 10K total reported Covid deaths. On a per capita basis, East Africa has apparently never taken part a pandemic.
Perhaps they just aren't testing enough to catch cases?
New seroprevalence study in Ethopia indicates that true cases are 5X detected cases - essentially the same as studies have indicated in the USA or Europe.
So, they are not missing an extraordinary number of cases.
So far there does not appear to be a positive correlation between the number of people vaccinated in a state and the prevalence of Covid in that state.
Mississippi, for instance, has the lowest rate of vaccination and the lowest current prevalence.
Community prevalence continues to appear to be primarily driven by regional-seasonal factors with the lowest case counts across the South, from Alabama through California and the highest in the Northeast (from Michigan through Maine) plus the PNW:
Vaccination uptake has been highest in the Northeast and lowest in the Southeast (and Mountain West).
So, it is likely that those states which are currently "in season" also happen to be those with the fastest uptake and those "out of season" have the most hesitancy.
A few weeks ago, the Balkans where "spiking"; now, with amazingly coincidental timing, cases are plummeting across the region:
Looking at test positivity makes clear that there were two distinct seasonal waves in the Balkans - one in late Autumn, one in early Spring.
It beggars belief that these patterns are anything more than standard regional-seasonal respiratory virus transmission.
Within this region, Hungary has vaccinated a large share of their adult population, while Bulgaria has vaccinated almost no one - and yet their cases peaked at the same time and they have the same test positivity currently.
Excluding microstates, two of the top seven most vaccinated nations are the neighboring states of Hungary and Serbia, each having vaccinated more than 25% of the population:
Serbia initiated their program more quickly, but Hungary has recently surpassed Serbia.
It will be interesting to see if these efforts have resulted in declining infections and/or fatalities.
Initially, cases appear to have risen sharply following the launch of mass vaccination, peaking about 8 weeks later, and then falling sharply.
I spent Spring Break in Texas with my family last week and I can report that Team Apocalypse has lost the war.
Flights were 100% full with many families. In-flight food and drinks have returned. Airports packed on both ends - a world of difference from just a few months ago.
Everything is open in Texas and (outside of Austin), you'd be hard pressed to recall the "pandemic". Restaurants are crowded, people were friendly, there's live music, tourist areas are packed, there's no sanitation theater, and masks are rare.
Even in places that ostensibly require masks (Walmart, H-E-B), less than 20% of people were actually wearing a mask - and no one made a big deal about it, either way.
In fact, I never wore a mask for a single second outside of the Austin airport.
While recent weeks remain subject to revision, it now appears that mortality in the USA peaked during the first week of January and returned to below-normal levels by the end of February:
The drop in mortality over the past 10 weeks corresponds with the waning of the Covid winter season (and the apparent absence of other normal causes of excess Winter mortality):
The narrative that Covid deaths peaked in early January due to "the holidays" does not fit the data: deaths peaked in the central USA before Christmas (infections peaked before Thanksgiving).
In this region, deaths are almost certainly currently below normal.