Coronavirus, Mid April, 2023

Coronavirus, Mid April, 2023

By the Numbers

The Numbers: 

I am no longer keeping track of the daily numbers.  But IF I was, the official numbers nationwide, would be approaching downward, to around 100,000 cases. The official numbers continue be under-counted by a factor of 3-10, depending on the source of the estimate. 

More in keeping with reality, the number of people hospitalized with Covid has dropped from 27,300 on Feb 2 to 17,000 now.  

The New York Times Interactive graph ( It can be found here...)  has different numbers and is reporting a drop off of new cases as well.  My source may not be as accurate as theirs, but I'll stick with it because it is an easy scrape, and is good enough.  This is more about trends than anything else. 

Dominant Variants in the US: 

    XBB  97%    Up from 64 in January
    BQ's  1.6%     Down from 31 in January

    And the rest...

The XBB variant is immune to treatment with monoclonal antibodies.

Per CDC tracker...

It has been a while.  I never intended this missive to be a regular, "you know it's out there" warning. It was always intended to fight misinformation and provide updates on what is new.  And there hasn't been much new.  We certainly have entered the "learning to live with Covid" phase.

Long Covid update

What incentivized this report was a new study on long covid. I long ago theorized that covid had the ability to hide in remote parts of the body, and later proliferate when the immune system relaxed.  

This also had the effect of not showing up in nasal swab tests, because it was no longer there.  Meanwhile, covid was still somewhere, damaging blood vessels where it is hiding, causing the various symptoms experienced by long covid sufferers.  

This also explains what has been called Paxlovid Rebound, affecting about 4% of all cases.

A study looking into this was finding that long covid sufferers were still displaying immune system responses to the virus, even though the virus itself was not in evidence.  For weeks and months in some cases.  The body was still fighting, just not able to defeat the bugger.  Which in itself causes malaise in addition to problems with the infected area.

When will the next booster be offered?

There is no official word.   The current Bivalent shot is the latest offering.  If you had that one in the last 6 months, that is as good as it gets for now.  The prevailing opinion is the next booster will be offered at the beginning of the next flu season.  One expert summed it up this way, "It's up to the virus."

Excess Deaths.

The CDC count of excess deaths is still above the baseline.  Whether you die "of Covid", or "with Covid" is a specious argument.  In Dec, the number of excess deaths was around 18% or 11,000 per week.  Falling to 12.8% or 7,700 per week  in February.