The daily COVID data for the US, South Africa and the UK indicate that the next two months will see a US COVID seven day moving average daily death rate in the 2000-4000 range.
South Africa had the Omicron wave about 6 weeks before the US. The Omicron wave peaked in South Africa about 6 weeks before the US peak. South Africa’s daily cases are down ten times from their daily case peak. However, daily COVID deaths in South Africa have continued to rise. There is a lag of several weeks with daily COVID deaths as people get infected, then some have a severe reaction and are hospitalized and then some are not saved. The UK Omicron wave hit and peaked about two weeks before the US and the UK have not seen a drop in COVID daily deaths. There will be an eventual peak and significant decline in daily COVID deaths. This appears to be at least one month away and the level appears unlikely to significantly decline until late in the spring.
As of Feb 7, 2022 the CDC count 903,038 US COVID deaths. John Hopkins counts 909k and Worldometers counts 932k.
If there is an average of 2,500 daily US COVID deaths then
the data reported for March 1 (one day delay in reporting) will be 955k CDC, 960k John Hopkins, 983k Worldometers.
the forecast for March 19, 2022 will be 1.00M CDC, 1.006M John Hopkins, 1.03M Worldometers
One million US COVID deaths would be reported by the CDC on March 19, March 16 by John Hopkins, and March 8 by Worldometers.
If there is an average of 3000 daily deaths for the next few weeks then
the data reported for March 1 (one day delay in reporting) will be 966k CDC, 972k John Hopkins, 995k Worldometers
the forecast for March 12, 2022 will be 1M CDC, 1.006M John Hopkins, 1.03M Worldometers
One million US COVID deaths would be reported by the CDC on March 12, March 10 John Hopkins, March 3 Worldometers.
John Hopkins and the CDC are the most cited sources by news media. The one million US COVID deaths seems quite certain to happen in the March 8-20th time window.
The IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) has a garbage projection that the US cumulative COVID deaths will be 934,000 on June 1, 2022. The only IHME scenario that deviates from the main IHME projection is where there are even fewer deaths. This occurs in a fantasy land where there is over 80% mask compliance and effective mask usage. IHME apparently does not watch ESPN where 10,000 to 60,000 mostly unmasked people are at each stadium attending multiple sporting events every day.
Longer Term Forecast Looking at the COVID Waves and the Flu Since 1900
In the US, there have been five waves of increasing COVID daily COVID deaths. Two of those waves saw declines from the peak down to less than half the daily deaths. The peaks lasted about two months and the declines to half or less took two months or more. In the other cases, another wave started before the daily COVID deaths reached half of the peak. Getting to four times less than the peak took 3 months for the first wave and five months for the third wave.
Is the long-term relative steady-state for the US and world COVID epidemic like the summer of 2021? The summer of 2021 was when there were significant amounts of vaccination and a peak level of immunity relative to the variants of COVID. This could be what it looks like longer-term when everyone has been infected multiple times before and has reasonable immunity to the COVID variants. This is the case with the flu. Every year most people get the flu but they have had the flu multiple times before.
This would mean long-term daily US COVID deaths in the 200 to 500 range. This would mean annual US COVID deaths of 70,000 to 200,000.
Flu seasons in the US usually have 20,000 to 100,000 deaths per year. Flu hospitalizations range from 150,000 to 1.2 million in typical years.
It took about three to four decades for flu seasons to get substantially less harsh than the situation in the 1920-1929 after the 1918 pandemic. The three decades after were a lot better than the 1918 pandemic but they did not settle into the lower levels experienced from 1970 to 2020 for three decades.
US Flu deaths in the 1920-1929 timeframe was in a population-adjusted range of 150,000 to 700,000. The US flu deaths were less because of the lower population but the annualized deaths per 100,000 were ranging from 50-200 throughout the year. Multiplying by 3350 would get to what we would have expected if there was our current population. We currently do have therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies and antivirals and vaccination. This should reduce the public health impact of COVID. The negative factors are that the US population is older and has more obese. Those factors increase the public health impact of COVID.
The long-term burden of COVID would be reduced if the public health problem of obesity could be improved. Those who are obese are three times as likely to die or have a severe case of COVID. Countries with less than 25% obesity rates have ten times lower death rates from COVID.
Technological and medical breakthroughs that could reduce the COVID burden would be treatments that boost immune systems overall, specific improvements with COVID like t-cell vaccinations, close monitoring of the genetics of variations and a rapid proactive response, and treatments and success with weight loss and overall population health.
It will be likely that COVID will be three times as deadly as the flu for about two or three decades.
John Hopkins Emily Gurley, PhD ’12, MPH, a professor of the practice in Epidemiology, has suggested the COVID public health policy should shift from infection prevention to preventing hospitalization and death. COVID infection prevention has been economically costly and ineffective.
COVID is never going away. How many hospitalizations and deaths can we accommodate? How many are we willing to accept?
We do this with other infectious diseases, and the time has come to have that discussion about COVID. If we set those goals—and I’m not suggesting it will be easy—we can set up strategies to get there. There may even be multiple pathways to those goals. I think if we really focus on [hospitalizations and deaths], it would change how we use our finite resources.
SOURCES- CDC, American Journal of Public Health, John Hopkins, wikipedia, IHME, worldometers
Written and analyzed by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
the Big Cause. Probably blew up in the faces of a lot of typical activist zealots – left, green, pro-immigration, free markets. Libertarians and rNecks probably liked it.
it will be interesting to contrast the various regulation systems and their effectiveness – NZ vs China vs US vs north Europe vs Eritrea (almost totaly unvaxxed) since early 2020.
exactly. drama. Despite the number of deaths and hospitalizations, this issue became as ridiculously overblown as it did due to politics. This can be framed as: an existential threat due to tech hubris, international conspiracies, ageist propoganda, notions of freedom and individual free-will, vaccination politics, urban vs rural, west cultural vs others, government transparency, and on… All can find a cause, which meant that it had a preceived threat way-out-of-whack with reality as defined by other illnesses and medical situations.. which attracted news, which was perceived as a 'important' by the politicians, which was perceived as we need to act quickly rather than thoughtfully. Crazy and not likely to be over (just accepted).
PSimple answer to covid is ivermectin. Google Dr. Theresa Lawrie, and then use FLCCC (Front Line Critical Care Coalition…Kory is the sparkplug there) as a search term. Covid can be defeated, and the rhetoric used against its use suggests an unsavory hidden agenda.
You make some good points here that do need to be pushed more in among people for better air circulation in businesses/schools (UV C added in), using special metal surfaces that can be anti-viral, but I would say that we will see more mRNA vaccines in the future through EUAs for other variants and completely different viruses, as well as other non-viral pathogens. There is a silver lining to this pandemic in that it could protect us through our knowledge gained for something far worse that will surely come in the future (if from COVID from something that shifts for more virulence/pathogenicity with a new spike protein). mRNA vaccines I think will be good for potential universal vaccines against Influenza, CoVs, HIV, Malaria, or other pathogens potentially used as bioweapons.
Thems are excess deaths above the curve.
A million extra bodies to bury.
Why is obesity so much worse in the USA compared to major EU countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain? There is something sick about the USA. What are the society forces in play?
Long covid. The unending fight. What wil happen to funding, research, etc., that was piled on this drama??? we'll see in 5 years.
Kindly tell me what right conclusions your so called medical experts came to. I can give a list of all the wrong ones. Lockdowns were useless. The overzealous restrictions badly damaged our economy. The money the govt gave away has created massive inflation and thus people are worse off now then before. Oh and yeah, they virus is still here, and Fauci is terrified that eventually enough people are going to come to their senses and realize that he funded the gain of function research that likely created the virus.
Finally, how come all your so called experts still haven't found the bat that COVID came from? It's been two years. Methinks it doesn't exist.
No, they would have died anyway. That's what a co-morbidity means. They were already dying from something else. COVID just made it happen a bit sooner.
Everybody dies. Especially those folks who eat, drink, and smoke themselves to death. If they don't care about their own health, why should I? COVID didn't kill them. They're own irresponsible life choices did. Get off your high horse and stop acting like you really care. If you want to take up a righteous cause how about doing something about China's ongoing effort to exterminate the Uighurs.
The key is how the virus gets passed. If you're not wearing a mask, you're not vaccinated, you're obese, your 70 years old, and you go into a crowded restaurant – who is to blame for you getting COVID? The 20 year old who gave it to you, or you? The answer is you.
Excessive deaths is a gross indicator of the effect of the pandemic; however as nextbigfuture points out below; they're not all FROM Covid. Crime, drugs, suicide, delays in medical care while capacity was being reserved (formally or informally) for anticipated Covid cases all contribute to the over all number.
I seriously doubt that we will ever have a count within 5% accuracy of the number of deaths FROM Covid; the data set was compromised from the beginning by financial rewards for linking deaths to Covid.
LA last January? Can't find a more recent story than that and that was bringing out refrigerated trucks to use as temporary morgue facilities. Were they actually used? The emergency hospital in NYC had a vary low utilization rate. The state morgue facility Minnesota acquired at the time was never used. I'd love a link to what you are referring to, as it needs context.
IRT to what the Guard and Reserves think they'll end up doing; well you might be surprised at the odd things they get tasked with when the gov't needs to close a gap. See Operation Graphic Hand sometime.
It makes a big difference.
You have any idea how many people die with HSV-1? (The herpes virus that causes cold sores.) ALMOST EVERYONE! How many people die OF HSV-1? Almost nobody.
If you confuse "with" and "of", you'd think cold sores were a pandemic on the scale of the black death.
You realize this was over more than two years, and represents a fairly small fraction of the people who normally die over such a period, right?
I swear, some people must think humans were immortal until Covid came along, given the way they react to numbers like this.
Grim but true: We may no longer have to worry about the flood of oldsters taking away resources in everything form healthcare to social security. They'll simply be dead.
Doesn't do much for the predictions of ever-increasing lifespans, however, which are already down 1 year from Covid in 2021.
With an average age higher than life expectancy they were on their way out. If it wasn't COVID then something else would have got them
Some people in their 20s and 30s get Covid and don’t realize that eventually they are passing it along to people in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. And some of those people are not able to survive omicron.
About 3500 people in the U.S. died from Covid yesterday for just this reason. The virus doesn’t seem serious to younger people. But it kills a good number of the elderly who get it.
Somehow our society is not able to make this correlation, so a lot of older people are dying off because younger people are giving them Covid who don’t realize it. Many of the older people who are dying also did not get a booster shot.
Does it matter? No Covid and they likely would still be alive, regardless of preexisting conditions. With Covid, that was the trigger that accelerated their mortality.
National Guard called out in my area to help with the bodies. Bet you the weekend warriors never thought they’d be doing that.
Curious how many were preventable.
So the medical expertise of every nation on this planet came to the wrong conclusions and took the wrong actions? Jesus Christ, get real.
One million. One bloody million. You could put that in bold up there in the title, all alone. Big eye popping font. It won’t matter. A group of individuals will always doubt it, discount it, downplay it or work to discredit or diminish it in some way. The million excess graves that were dug simply won’t register with them.
What needs to be done is what should have been done even before the the pandemic: Avoid viruses feeding foods such as eggs, gluten, and dairy, minimize fats to improve body system functioning, move to fruits greens, vegetable of and tubers and get exposed to sunlight. Add the supplement that you really need, Starting with micro C and zinc. That will make everyone healthier and reduce infection rate also.
Here is what the medical medium recommends to build the immune system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrVBD-4hItY
Regulatory agencies are a double edged sword. Sure, they can serve a public good. But they're susceptible to political pressure and greed. And often they come under the influence of the very industries they're supposed to regulate. And let's not forget it was one our own regulatory agencies that funded gain of function research in China. And that was done because it had been outlawed here in the US.
I think perhaps the point NBF is making here is that your immune system will adapt to COVID over the long term. Just like it does with the flu. We've all had the flu at least once or twice, if not more, in our life times. We've likely been exposed to it hundreds of times and never knew it. A similar process will happen with COVID, just like every other disease humans come into contact with over their lifetimes.
Ultimately, we need to get used to the idea of COVID being around forever, just like the flu. I've been vaccinated, but I still got Omicron. So I'm done with vaccines. Let my immune system do its thing.
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That hobby horse is over played, it's the regulatory agencies that keeps the microchips out of the jabs.
Concur. I'd add a few other requests for NBF. Like how about addressing how obesity and other poor, irresponsible personal health practices greatly increased one's chance of dying from COVID. Or how about the fact it was obvious from the very beginning this disease was only a serious threat to the age 65 plus crowd.
All the nonsense we've gone thru the last two years was for nothing. Had we dealt with this disease calmly, dispassionately, and with sound logic we could have avoided the lockdowns, the negative effects on mental health, and the economic consequences. Instead as a society we cowardly gave in to our Chicken Little fears and accomplished nothing. Now we're $30 Trillion in debt. Inflation is 7% and rising. And COVID is here to stay. Reality bites.
Define most.
Well said. It seems it always boils down to the never ending struggle between logic and reason vs emotion and politics.
I'm reminded of the Trojan priest Laocoön who begged his fellow citizens to set fire to the Trojan horse to ensure it was not a trick. They spurned his advice, brought the horse into the city, and the rest is history. Three thousand years later we are still making the same mistakes based on fear, emotion, and politics.
from COVID vs died with COVID. Can you provide these stats?
In the UK, via a FOI request, they found:
2020
Total deaths, 9,400
0-64, 1,549
65 and over, 7,851
2021 first 3 quarters
Total deaths from covid alone, 17,371
Of this number 13,597 were 65 or over
Of this number, 3,774 were under 65
Average age of death in UK from covid in 2021
82.5 years (higher than average life expectancy)
These numbers are a fraction of the total deaths being broadcasted for COVID in the UK (circa 160k)
Full video here: watch?v=9UHvwWWcjYw&ab_channel=Dr.JohnCampbell
there were increases in drug related deaths (total about 100k), crime deaths (22k) and other deaths related to isolation and other factors. The increase was about 25-30k for drugs and murders.
Excess deaths per CDC are also in the 800k range even when using the upper bound of normal. Using the mid-range of avg deaths then there have been 900k-1.2M excess deaths over the past 2 years. About 3.4 million deaths in 2021. In 2020, 3,358,814 deaths occurred in the United States. 2.85 million deaths in 2019. 2.84 million in 2018.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195920/number-of-deaths-in-the-united-states-since-1990/
Excess deaths per CDC is 810k over upperbound of standard deaths over the past two years.
A lot depends on how much longer we permit the regulatory agencies to hobble medical progress. Covid finally forced them to permit the use of mRNA vaccines, but one of the biggest advantages of mRNA vaccines over conventional is that they can be easily updated on the fly. And THAT the regulators would not permit: They're still demanding people be vaccinated with the original vaccine designed for a version of Covid that was prevalent about two years ago.
I doubt that mRNA vaccines are the only advance in the pipeline. A pipeline regulators have choked down to a trickle.
The other aspect, of course, is the monomaniacal focus on vaccination, masks, and social isolation, to the exclusion of things like vitamin D supplementation, and improvement of HVAC systems. Imagine what things would be like today, if instead of crashing the economy with lockdowns, we'd gone on a crash program of bringing everybody's nutritional status up to optimum, (Rather than just enough to avoid deficiency diseases!) and upgrading HVAC systems to increase air flow and sterilize the air passing through them.
Why are UV C germicidal lights not all over the place? Why are we still using door knobs that aren't germicidal? They were using copper door knobs because of their germicidal properties a century ago! Sure, you have to clean them, but you don't catch stuff off them.
It's like we've forgotten as much about fighting disease as we've learned, over the years. Maybe more.
How about you cover how excess deaths aren't anywhere near approaching a million over the last couple of years. How about you cover how the PCR test couldn't differentiate between the flu and covid-1984 the first two years. How about covering when you test everyone without symptoms you end up with an absolutely tremendous false positive rate. How about covering the bonuses given to hospitals for a positive diagnosis. This was all a royal scam.