U.S. COVID hospitalizations hit new record high, raising risks for patients

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/01/11/1071568846/u-s-covid-hospitalizations-hit-new-record-high-raising-risks-for-patients


The omicron-driven surge has sent COVID-19 hospitalizations skyrocketing across the U.S., reaching a new pandemic high this week with 145,982 patients hospitalized.

This exceeds the previous high recorded in January last year, according to data tracked by the Department of Health and Human Services, from more than 5,400 hospitals in the country.

Patients with COVID now fill about 30% of ICU beds in the nation and pediatric COVID hospitalizations are also at the highest rate of the pandemic.

The record-breaking numbers are a sign of just how quickly the omicron variant has swept across the country. Overall infections are also at record levels, with the U.S. averaging more than 700,000 new cases a day.



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62,000 Los Angeles students and staff test positive for Covid ahead of return to school (That's around 14%)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/10/us/california-schools-covid/index.html

As Los Angeles students and staff prepare to return to school Tuesday, about 62,000 have tested positive for Covid-19, school district data show.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is requiring all students and employees to show a negative test result before returning.
It is the nation's second largest district, with more than 640,000 students in grades K-12.
About 414,000 test results have been recorded, for a 14.99% positivity rate. That is well below Los Angeles County as a whole, where the positivity rate has spiked above 22%.


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Why More Americans Are Saying They’re ‘Vaxxed and Done’
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/covid-omicron-vaccination-rashomon/621199/

Vaxxed and done statement:
"For more than a year, I did everything that public-health authorities told me to do. I wore masks. I canceled vacations. I made sacrifices. I got vaccinated. I got boosted. I’m happy to get boosted again. But this virus doesn’t stop. Year over year, the infections don’t decrease. Instead, virulence for people like me is decreasing, either because the virus is changing, or because of growing population immunity, or both. Americans should stop pointlessly guilting themselves about all these cases. In the past week, daily confirmed COVID cases per capita were higher than the U.S. in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Denmark, France, the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and even Australia, one of the most COVID-cautious countries in the world. As the coronavirus continues its unstoppable march toward endemicity, our attitude toward the virus should follow a similar path toward stoicism. COVID is becoming something like the seasonal flu for most people who keep up with their shots, so I’m prepared to treat this like I’ve treated the flu: by basically not worrying about it and living my life normally."

Vaxxed and cautious statement:
"Why on earth would we suddenly relax measures now, during the largest statistical wave of COVID ever recorded in the U.S.? We shouldn’t treat Omicron like any old seasonal flu, because it’s not like any old seasonal flu. It’s likely deadlier for those without immunity and almost certainly several times more transmissible for everybody else. We have no idea what the effects of Omicron on long COVID will be, but evidence of lingering symptoms should make us wary of just letting tens of millions of people get needlessly infected. Moreover, the health-care system is already worn down and at risk of being overloaded. Record-high caseloads are societally debilitating, creating long chains of infections that are bound to reach some immunocompromised people and the elderly, thus causing needless death. For all these reasons, we should take individual measures to throttle the spread of this virus."