While the sharp rise in Delta-variant COVID cases has sparked a renewed push for mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccine “passports,” there’s been little attention paid to just how dangerous this variant is. Perhaps that’s because the evidence suggests it is far less of a public health concern than previous outbreaks.
Just how much less of a threat isn’t precisely known. But there are ways to gauge the risk. One is to look at the number of COVID cases and the number of deaths happening right now, compared with what happened a year ago.
What do you find? First of all, there are fewer cases than last year. From June to August this year, there have been more than 2 million recorded COVID cases in the U.S.
Over the same days last year, the total number of COVID cases was above 3.1 million.
How about deaths? From June 1 through Aug. 9, the total number of COVID fatalities was 20,149. Last year, the death count was 62,287.
In other words, cases are 41% lower than during this time last year, and deaths are 66% lower.
Looked at another way, the “case fatality rate” was 1% from June 1 through Aug. 9 this year. It was 2% over the same days last year.
Looking at a longer time frame, the case fatality rate all this year is 1.5%. And the case fatality rate for all of last year was 1.8%.
In other words, the fatality rate from COVID appears to be steadily declining.
The lower lethality of the Delta variant makes sense.
Like any other infectious disease, COVID picked off the low-hanging fruit first – the very sick and elderly. So the case fatality rate plunged after its initial spike in early 2020 – when it was around 6%.
Doctors and hospitals also learned about better ways to treat the disease, no doubt saving lives.
And, the vaccines that unexpectedly appeared by last November have since created a vastly larger pool of people with immunity to the new virus. The vaccinated who are catching the Delta variant are experiencing far milder symptoms than they would have otherwise.
So far, in fact, there have been 36.8 million recorded cases of COVID, there are 167 million people fully vaccinated, and another 29 million partially vaccinated. That means roughly 60% of the nation has either had COVID or has been vaccinated. Even assuming there’s a lot of overlap between the two groups, that’s still a massive number of people with at least some immunity to the disease.
Here’s another way to look at it. Deaths from all causes so far this year are now lower in every age group than last year, especially among the elderly.
But while the disease has become less fearsome, the public perception hasn’t changed, and so the fixation on case counts only feeds the public’s anxiety.
Yes, there are certain areas where hospital resources are being strained at the moment. But overall, hospital capacity is far from reaching its limit. Data from John Hopkins University of Medicine’s tracking center shows that 25% of intensive care unit beds in the country aren’t occupied. Even in hotspots such as Texas, 10% of ICU beds are available, as are 20% of inpatient beds. Ten percent of Florida’s ICU beds and 16% of inpatient beds are currently unoccupied.
So why isn’t this seemingly good news about COVID making headlines?
Here’s one possibility. The public health community and leftist politicians don’t want to give up their newfound powers.
If COVID goes away, Anthony Fauci suddenly becomes just another annoying bureaucrat that nobody pays attention to.
And leftists, who have been able to boss people around and spend taxpayer money at levels no one would have ever tolerated before COVID, are loathe for things to get back to normal.
There’s also the fact that the current outbreak provides another chance for Democrats to score political points against Republicans. Just as we saw in the initial outbreak, Republican governors are coming under vicious and constant attack for not being sufficiently authoritarian, despite the growing body of scientific evidence that lockdowns and mask mandates are largely ineffective.
Power doesn’t only corrupt. It is also highly addictive. And the fear of suffering painful withdrawal symptoms supersedes any other consideration.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Thanks for this information. It definitely helps us to keep the propaganda we are flooded with in perspective. I was surprised to see the big differences between 2020 and 2021 cases. These comparisons are information the government, and the MSM media will not give us.
Just taking vitamins D, K, and zinc daily cut your odds of death by around 75%.
I take C, Zinc, and Airborne, which combines a little of everything.
For me, 2000 mg of vitamin C, 10K IU of vitamin D, 30 mg of zinc, plus a multivitamin tablet specially made for seniors like me. I also try to get 20-30 minutes of sunlight a day (extra vitamin D). I tried Airborne once; it tasted terrible!
I have been taking for about the past year; Quercetin, Zinc, heavy Vitamins C and D and low dose(81) aspirin.
Just this week I got an Rx for Ivermectin from my Osteopath(DO). It is a once a week dose for use as a prophylactic. I took my first dose yesterday.
Best of luck to all….I think the Vitamin D and Zinc are the key. I’m taking 6,000iu of the D. Get out in the dull daily.
I am 78, no ‘experimental vax” or masks for me…..never.
What a disingenuous article. Of course cases and deaths are lower. 50% of the population is vaccinated! So over 90% of new cases and 99% of deaths are from the unvaccinated 50%. Delta’s numbers aren’t better because it’s less deadly or less contagious, the numbers are better because 50% of the population is vaccinated.
If the entire country were unvaccinated like it was last year, the Delta variant’s numbers would likely look much worse. Is this what passes for integrity on this site?
It has been widely acknowledged from the beginning and is obvious to anyone with a brain that Delta is more highly contagious and less deadly. As almost all virus mutations are. Only a partisan know nothing or someone with an agenda would disagree
you are a troll, go back to your hole!
Any comments on why the death rate is lower?
Perhaps we are reaching her immunity. Also data does not support that non vaccination is causing Covid reinfection. In fact just the opposite is occurring. Countries with the highest vaccinated population are seeing the highest infection rates. Israel is one of these countries. I’m told the Amish have nearly zero infection rate. Guess why? They don’t have televisions.
Catching covid provides its own immunity once you recover. It has nothing to do with the questionable shots. Those prone to catch it have caught it already. Numbers go down because covid is burning itself out.
Gee, a nurse working on the covid ward at my local hospital told me that the greater percentage of patients have been vaxed. She is highly sceptical about what the MSM are saying and the sheep that that believe them keep blindly repeating
Nonsense,What ever happened to natural immunity from actually getting the disease? Oh, and by the way,vaxxed people are still getting sick( probably from the vaccine itself).
Then please explain since the vax is the be all to end all why 85% of the new cases in Israel are people over 65 that have been vaccinated.
Overall an excellent article. As the article noted, the COVID virus quickly wiped out the vulnerable elderly (e.g. in NY nursing homes, which became de facto death camps thanks to a state policy requiring nursing homes to admit COVID-infected individuals). As the article also noted, the statistics point to the virus evolving to become less lethal over time (a common evolutionary event as epidemics subside). Missing are scientific studies, which should be an end product when “experimental use permits” (EUPs) are granted. Sports stadium drive-by jabs, drugstore-administered jabs, etc. do not meet EUP standards. Modern scientific experiments feature signed patient consent forms, ethical review boards monitoring the jabbing, control groups, groups getting placebo injections, comparison treatments, statistical analysis of data, etc.
Given the absence of scientific rigor, we cannot say for certain whether the vaccinated are getting less sick because they are vaccinated or whether they are getting less sick because COVID virus strains are becoming milder. But the fact that the vaccinated are getting sick at all and spreading the virus should be troubling. If the polio or small pox vaccines performed likewise, they would not have been so widely embraced. Clearly, the COVID vaccine is neither fully protective nor does it stop transmission (hence, the renewed mask mandates). Increasing jabs to 3x per year should not be the only available alternative in a free country. The African nation of Tanzania has the world’s lowest COVID case rate (~500), because residents are taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for malaria protection, and this fortuitously knocks out COVID. Thus, an EUP should be scientifically comparing mRNA vaccines to the traditional attenuated virus vaccine treatments developed in China, HCQ, etc. Not just for efficacy, but also for side-effects such as thrombosis, blood clots, strokes, death, etc. Troubling preliminary reports from the UK indicating more vaccine-related deaths than COVID deaths, should trigger rigorous scientific studies. Just because the vaccine industry has legal immunity from lawsuits, does not mean risks should be ignored or go unstudied. It is a big leap to mandates for compounds that have hardly been studied and only been in existence such a short time.
The worry about “breakthrough” cases of vaccinated people is also overblown, the State of Virginia Health Department is posting the actual numbers they’re seeing, and they are impressively small, approximately 0.072% of vaccinated Virginians are “breakthrough”. (I hope links are allowed) https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-data-insights/covid-19-cases-by-vaccination-status/
“Breakthrough cases” are the new term for what was previously known, before March 2020, as a leaky vaccine. Leaky vaccines are vaccines that only reduce symptoms of a disease. The flu vaccines are leaky vaccines. They don’t prevent anyone from actually getting infected, which is what a true vaccine should do, and they do not prevent transmission. So, if you are happy with leaky vaccines, so be it.
By your definition, all vaccines are “leaky”. The purpose of a vaccine is to prime your immune system to fight off / neutralize a disease causing virus when (not if) you get it.
No vaccine will prevent a virus from invading / infecting your system – so the real question is never “Will I catch the virus?” Rather the question is “Will the virus catch me (cause symptomatic disease)”?
Hmmm
In other words:
1) Every medical, scientific and legal definition pre-COVID (2020)
defined a “Vaccine” as a drug which PREVENTS infection by the
targeted disease or Virus.
a. Generally speaking it does this by stimulating the patient’s body to
produce the necessary anti-bodies to resist the disease
b. Typically traditional “Vaccines” are over 98% and often close to
100% effective in preventing infection. Imagine if small pox
“Vaccines” were only 50% effective. Humanity might have been
wiped off the planet…
2) All the so called “Vaccines” currently available in the US are well
under 40% effective in terms of actually preventing infection. This
Despite media and government claims to the contrary.
3) None of the “Vaccines” available worldwide received more than a few
months testing in human trials instead of the typical 5-7 and often up
to 10 years YEARS necessary to insure the safety and efficacy of a
Vaccine BEFORE it is placed into mass production.
a. The inclusion of a never before used and thus obviously
experimental mRNA component demanded that the period for
human testing trials must be extended not reduced to a matter
of weeks before introduction into the general population.
b. Because Every single “Vaccine” in the world was allowed to
bypass existing many existing laws, rules, regulations,
guidelines, protocols and procedures that had been in place
for decades (pre- COVID-19) governing the development,
creation, testing and certification for a “Vaccine”, including but
not limited to limiting human testing and trials to a matter of
weeks instead of years THEY ARE ALL BY ANY EXISTING
(PRE-COVID) DEFINTION EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS!!
c. The real world effectiveness of these Vaccines are SO LOW
that that they do not even meet the FDA/CDC’s own (pre-
Covid-19) minimum standards to qualify for emergency use.
d. The number and severity of the negative reactions and the
mortality rate associated with these Vaccines is already far
higher than literally 1000’s of other Vaccines and drugs which
the FDA pulled from the Market or simply failed to get
certification at all. Clearly, instead of planning to give full
approval for mass human experimentation, based on the
FDA/CDC’s own pre- COVID-19 guidelines they should have
revoked the emergency authorization for all of “Vaccines”
months ago.
e. The US government is flagrantly violating the Constitution by
illegally granting itself and every corporation and private
citizen involved with COVID-19 “blanket immunity”
1)The first Amendment guarantees EVERY citizen the right
to seek redress for grievances from the government
Obviously, “blanket immunity” takes away that right.
2) The 14th Amendment guarantees the right of EVERY
citizen to get equal treatment. Clearly “Blanket Immunity
for some is as unequal treatment as humanly possible.
4) What this all means is that every single government in the world
today that is forcing and/or “coercing” citizens into taking these
experimental drugs are guilty of violating international and US law as
well the Nuremburg CODE. The size and scope of these flagrant and
violent acts of forced participation in medical experiments constitute
crimes against humanity.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_w 76% vaccinated…per CDC
“If COVID goes away, Anthony Fauci suddenly becomes just another annoying bureaucrat that nobody pays attention to.”
Yeah, but if Anthony Fauci doesn’t go away, than neither does Covid. We’re in Nuremberg-level stuff here.
I bet the impact of illegal immigration into the southern states is what is driving this surge…
How can we possibly know the case fatality rate when we still don’t know the incidence? That will only be determined via epidemiological testing which still has not been done.
The “vaccines” DO NOT impart immunity to the virus or variants. Last week Israeli TV reported that 85% of COVID hospitalizations were among the vaccinated.
“There’s also the fact that the current outbreak provides another chance for Democrats to score political points against Republicans.”
Not to mention that if they can maintain the hysteria, the Dems will get to bastardize the 2022 elections like they did 2020 and maintain their stranglehold on the government.
I wonder why the cdc has not started to review the patient deaths and see what other issues the people had. Wouldn’t that be wise?
neither one of the following statements can be proved – pure hopium.
And, the vaccines that unexpectedly appeared by last November have since created a vastly larger pool of people with immunity to the new virus. The vaccinated who are catching the Delta variant are experiencing far milder symptoms than they would have otherwise.
This is nice to see. I have been telling everyone who listens that the panic porn from the democrats and media is just creating fear in people of something that is more survivable than driving down a Chicago street. Even when Covid 19 was ragging last year, the deaths were rarely a direct result of covid. Media looking at daily case numbers is like watching the thermometer every hour to predict climate change. Wash your hands often when out in public places, stop touching your face, and for Gods sake, take the damn mask off.
“The vaccinated who are catching the Delta variant are experiencing far milder symptoms than they would have otherwise.”
Complete conjecture
This article is misleading, because all it does is focus on the fact that deaths are down in all age groups. Everyone knows this. This is because of the remarkable series of vaccines which are available, remarkably effective, and unbelievably safe. Half the country is vaccinated, thus deaths will drop dramatically.
This doesn’t make the disease less virulent. It doesn’t make those who are advocating preventing it fear-mongers nor power-grabbers. It means they were right throughout this pandemic: in the interest of the public health it is appropriate to have people take precautions and when available get vaccinated.
Yet, for the unvaccinated-of all age groups-the numbers of cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and disabilities are all significantly higher than they were a few months ago. Every study has shown greater than 95% of all the affected are unvaccinated.
The delta variant is scary. Get vaccinated.
The CDC has had to backtrack on their two latest scare tactic claims. How many other data points has this organization fudged over the last 18 months? Their narrative is falling apart.
These charts are worthless. Why? Because there has not been any world-wide standardized testing method developed in 18 months that is 98% accurate and can tell the difference between a covid germ, a flu germ or a cold germ. Without a firm, well established and tested method of discovering who or who doesn’t have covid, the case nonsense falls apart. You cannot have any cases unless you know you have a definite, proven test to determine them. Thus far, we have had 100% guesswork…typical of the CDC and pharma.
Interesting, but scientists have no proved there is no covid-19. It has never been isolated and DNA mapped. Hence, there can’t be a variant. It is merely yearly versions of typical flu strains.
Not so. Read more.
Hmmm
Just out of curiosity would one of the pro-vaxxer fascist loonies lurking on this forum kindly post links to at least 3 legitimate (fully) independent peer reviewed research studies which actually isolate and identifies “COVID-19” that surely must exist. After all, given the power that the “VIRUS” has handed to governments and corporations across the globe logic and common sense dictate that there must be literally dozens of such studies available online across the globe…
I’m trying to find a case fatality rate time series chart. Does anyone know where to find it? thxvmch
You can find them here. https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid
loath, not loathe for pete’s sake.
Remember when parents desired children to get chicken pox & measles while young because it was better than getting them when older? The thinking should mimic that now for the same reason. Very few children will suffer real consequences, but will gain long term immunity rather than the ersatz “vaccine” kind at the risk of God knows what long term effects.