Fun with COVID-19 reporting in MA (and elsewhere)

Good news: in the last 2 months, Boston's count of adults hospitalized for COVID-19 has been cut in half. Bad news: the number of occupied ICU beds in Boston is static... 88.6% at the start of February, 88.2% today with a low of 85.6% and a high of 90.8% in-between. Also, for comparison, the adults hospitalized for COVID-19 is currently just shy of where it was for June through August last year ... and just under 150% of what it was in Mar 2022 ... and just over 150% of what it was the summer of 2021.

Wait... there's a new strain? How is this possible? We're done with the pandemic so a new even-higher-transmissible strain can't possibly reach 20+ countries... again, the more we circulate COVID-19, the more quickly new strains will arise, another reason that spread-is-spread is important. Good news: The new strain doesn't (in early reporting) appear to cause more severe illness than other strains. Bad news: There is no reason to believe that it does not continue to cause long covid and even if it were to cause fewer severe illness, the higher transmissibility rate means it'll get to the more susceptible among us more than past strains have been recently. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/what-to-know-about-highly-transmissible-arcturus-covid-variant-as-new-symptom-emerges/3120580/?fbclid=IwAR11o69EYYJ6JGrvPeR88Edg1XHJmdhQ9W36QcqWWZH0hFOpHnKPap9mCfk

I'm reminded of a quote from The West Wing episode Inauguration Part 2: Over There  "We're for freedom of speech everywhere. We're for freedom to worship everywhere. We're for freedom to learn... for everybody. And because in our time, you can build a bomb in your country and bring it to my country, what goes on in your country is very much my business. And so we are for freedom from tyranny, everywhere"...  In this day, the increased risk one person takes with COVID-19 gets brought home and circulated to everybody else in their home and likely also to other events that person is going to. Spread begets spread, regardless of how severe the symptoms are, regardless of whether there are long-term impacts to the initial node in the network, it's still spread. And for those of us aware of the potential long term impacts have even a mild case of COVID-19, as well for as those of us who are at greater risk for reasons as common as being overweight or having diab

You may be seeing headlines about how COVID-19 spread in MA is down and the impact is less severe...  I would point out that we still have over twice the spread of our lowest point in 2022 (which was in early March, not the summer) and that lowest point was itself 10 times the lowest point in 2021.   I would also point out that until the last couple weeks, we were seeing double-digit deaths per day where we had actually seen a week in 2021 where we only had 1-2 deaths per day and even saw a day with 0 deaths. I would also point out that ICU bed usage in Boston, though not above their threshold for concern, are still above their target since June 2022, COVID-19 ED visits are higher than they were this time last year and approximately where they were last summer, and while the count of adults hospitalized due to COVID-19 has been falling steadily this year and is now lower than it has been since last May, it is also still higher than it was in April last year (aka, same time last year. I