"Because there is little to nothing to report [regarding Covid body counts], especially as far as Omicron is concerned.
Daily average deaths from COVID in the US are 1,276. That’s “little to nothing” ???
Yeah, exceeding 9/11 death toll every three days but ‘little to nothing to report’. Crazy.
Regarding Omicron, hospitalizations trail cases and deaths trail hospitalizations. We have yet to see just how hard Omicron will hit the US in terms of deaths. It’s seems to be significantly less virulent/deadly than Delta, but probably by something like 50%, not orders of magnitude. The big majority of Americans have some immunity from vaccine or prior infection, though, and that will provide much more protection against severe disease. Still in the US I fear we have a big enough population of unvaccinated and no-prior-Covid-infection people that Omicron will be pretty devastating.
Not sure where to find numbers for the US, but here in NC the state Covid dashboard has a nice graph tracking hospitalizations, and that is spiking high now, trailing case numbers by maybe a week. We’re getting back up in shouting distance of prior peaks in hospitalizations: 3008 is the latest number, compared to prior highest peak of just under 4000 last January. I’m guessing we will pass the prior peak in the coming week. Hopefully, better treatment will mean less death than last year, but the wave of death that’s in motion from Omicron will be significant.