New data indicates that COVID-19 might have entered its final stretch as a pandemic disease that strains hospitals and causes death, Issues & Insights reported.
There are more daily COVID-19 cases than at any other time in the past two years, yet the number of deaths and hospitalizations has not tracked with the record number of cases. Despite shattering previous case records, both hospitalizations and deaths have remained well below their peak levels during smaller spikes in cases last year.
When the Omicron variant emerged and cases started to rise in October 2021, the United States registered about 500,000 cases per day and 1,300 deaths per day.
This week the United States has seen between nearly one million cases per day, yet the deaths per day has actually fallen to about 1,100.
Total ICU beds occupied with COVID-19 patients, currently at about 19,000, has also remained low despite the high number of cases. That number peaked at more than 26,000 in mid-September with far fewer cases, Johns Hopkins reported.
This data indicates that COVID-19 may have morphed from a flu-like disease that can kill the elderly and immunocompromised into a disease akin to the common cold.
Increased transmissibility combined with decreased mortality could lead to widespread natural immunity.
“In time, virologists predict, the virus will become more benign, following an evolutionary pathway previously taken by four other human coronaviruses that today cause nothing more than the ‘common cold,'” the New Scientist explained.
Corporate media headlines are emphasizing the skyrocketing case numbers, but few have emphasized that hospitalizations and deaths have not followed.
Even Chief White House Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci admitted in an interview on ABC that “it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases,” the Houston Chronicle reported.
