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United States Medicine Stats

America's Covid-19 Hospitalizations Hit a Record High For the 7th Straight Day (cnn.com) 236

CNN reports: U.S. Covid-19 hospitalizations hit a record high for the seventh day in a row Saturday with 108,487 patients in hospitals around the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

And the number of Covid-19 cases reported in the United States reached more than 16 million after the country added 1 million cases in just four days, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

It took the nation more than eight months to reach 8 million cases but less than two months to double that, as the number of new cases continues to soar... On Friday, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use, the U.S. recorded more than 3,300 Covid-19 deaths — the most ever in one day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 231,700 new cases were reported, another pandemic high... The average of daily cases over the last week was 210,764, another pandemic high, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins data.

Another statistic from CNN: There have been more than 100,000 Covid-19 patients in America's hospitals every day since December 2.
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America's Covid-19 Hospitalizations Hit a Record High For the 7th Straight Day

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  • Us Deaths ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:02AM (#60825222)
    US Deaths, Covid-19: 305,082
    US Deaths, WWI: 116,516
    US Deaths, Vietnam: 58,209
    US Deaths, Korea: 36,574
    US Deaths, 9/11: 2,977
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Spanish Flu: 675,000 (estimated)
      WW2: 418,500

      Keep in mind that the population has grown quite a bit since those events as well. Since 1918, the population has tripled; even since 2000, it has gone up by a sixth.

      • Re:Us Deaths ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SkonkersBeDonkers ( 6780818 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:36AM (#60825294)

        Spanish Flu: 675,000 (estimated)
        WW2: 418,500

        Keep in mind that the population has grown quite a bit since those events as well. Since 1918, the population has tripled; even since 2000, it has gone up by a sixth.

        The Spanish flu numbers cover a period of over 2 years, so give us time, it is likely we will pass it.

        The WW2 numbers cover a period of 4 years so not only will we likely pass it absolutely, possibly as soon as April 2021, we're already well past it in terms of deaths per year.

        I'll grant what you're saying about population increases but at the same time medical knowledge has also advanced by light years, i.e., if Corona was the plague in question in 1918, the death numbers would likely be way higher than they are now.

        • In 1918, there was far far less global travel.

          • Depends what you call global travel.

            The war is called a "world war" for a reason. There was basically not a single spot on the planet that was not affected by the war.

            • by hey! ( 33014 )

              And the travelers (soldiers) were crammed into close quarters in camps, troop transports, and trenches.

              In WW1 there was at least a rudimentary understanding of infectious disease and sanitation, so it might well be the first war where more soldiers died from wounds than disease. Before the understanding of germ theory prompted advances in food sanitation and nursing, it was common for disease to kill many times more soldiers than wounds. Even in the second Boer war, slightly more than half of British deat

        • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
          I don't necessarily agree the death rate would be significantly higher 100 years ago. No doubt Covid-19 can be very dangerous but a majority of the population have minor to no symptoms from it. My family had Covid back in November. I had the worst symptoms with a fever and body aches for 2 days. My wife and son had mild headaches (which would have been ignored any other year). Typically with a flu, if you contract it, you know it. We also do not know how contagious it was compared to Covid 19.

          Of cou
          • Of course strictly speaking it's impossible to say for sure, but my point (just to give one example) was in 1918 there were no ventilators and so the many thousands of people that survived this year because they were put on ventilators would have surely died in 1918.

            And my larger point was more subtle which is that it makes no sense to point to things 100 years ago and try to act like well that was worse than this thing we're dealing with now therefore the response to the current situation is overblown. "H

        • Re:Us Deaths ... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @12:43PM (#60825860) Homepage Journal

          Also, it's peculiar that people say "not worse than the 1918 flu" as if that meant "not really all *that* bad". The 1918 flu pandemic was catastrophic. The only reason it doesn't loom greater in our historical consciousness is that it occurred in conjunction with a world war, and governments did everything they could to censor information about how bad things were going.

          "Not as bad as the Spanish flu" is like saying "not as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." Unless you're being ironic, it's borderline insane.

          And after this is over, after vaccination has stopped the COVID-19 pandemic, we shouldn't forget that strains of the flu subtype that caused the 1918 pandemic (H1N1) are still out there. Epidemiologists and public health planners are constantly worried about a severe H1N1 emerging, because it's only a matter of time. It's like the certainty that a civilization threatening asteroid is eventually going to hit the Earth, except that the probability of it happening in any given year is many orders of magnitude higher.

        • by doug141 ( 863552 )

          if Corona was the plague in question in 1918, the death numbers would likely be way higher than they are now.

          Or not... covid-19 co-morbidities like obesity and old age are much more prevalent now.

        • I'll grant what you're saying about population increases but at the same time medical knowledge has also advanced by light years, i.e., if Corona was the plague in question in 1918, the death numbers would likely be way higher than they are now.

          This is quite right. Some of you may not fully understand how relatively primitive medicine was prior to World War 2. It's actually kind of shocking.

          Rudolph Valentino - died from an infection after surgery for ulcers and appendicitis in 1926. There was no way at all to treat infections at the time except to drain them when possible and hope for the best.
          Harry Houdini - basically died from an infection caused by appendicitis which may or may not have been caused or made worse by blows he receive

        • If we're going to get technical over the details, it's also helpful to point out that we have FAR better medicine and medical equipment today than we did last century, and our living conditions are far cleaner, with sophisticated waste management and easy access to cheap, reliable sanitation products.

          And yet, we're hooking people up to ridiculously complex and expensive breathing machines and they're still dying. If they survive, we don't know what the long-term effects are.

          The reality of how serious this

      • Spanish Flu: 675,000 (estimated) WW2: 418,500

        Keep in mind that the population has grown quite a bit since those events as well. Since 1918, the population has tripled; even since 2000, it has gone up by a sixth.

        No amount of mental gymnastics people employ to try and compare this pandemic to garden variety flu [forbes.com] can camouflage the fact that a death toll of 305,082 is grotesque because it was entirely avoidable by such simple measures as hand washing, mask wearing, lockdowns and social distancing. At the current rate of one 9/11 per day the US will top WWII casualties by the middle of next month.

      • It's not about the percentage of the population dead or mere raw numbers, when compared to past wars or pandemics.
        After all, there was literally a whole century of scientific, medical and technological development since the Spanish Flu pandemic.

        The American COVID tragedy is that DESPITE a century of progress all those deaths, comparable to global wars or pandemics from literally a century ago, still happened and keep happening - though they were completely preventable.
        USA has climbed to the top of the deat

        • by Entrope ( 68843 )

          You claim that the US has the highest number of deaths "not because of the size of its population"? Yet it is 12th in per capita deaths, so population is what puts us in the lead for total deaths.

          You suggest that "all those deaths" "were completely preventable"? Certainly not by anything the US could have done.

          And you trust China's reported numbers of COVID deaths? They have acknowledged more than 6000 new cases in the last seven months, but only two deaths, giving an amazing 0.03% fatality rate -- the r

  • CNN? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BigChigger ( 551094 )
    Is /. just a front for CNN these days? Half+ the stories on the front page of /. are based on CNN links.
  • Who knew this would happen? Does our president know about this? What is he saying? OMG!
  • It took a lot of work, but America is showing the way to the rest of the world. 3,000 dead every day for the next two to three months, over 100,000 hospitalized, and growing, over 300,000 dead and well over 200,000 new cases reported each day.

    No other country in the world can lay claim to those figures. We are so far ahead of the pack, they can't see us. We are, to use the phrase, number one.

    If we can keep up this pace, we can truly show the rest of the world what winning looks like.

  • With the rush to get college students back in class, deaths in college towns have soared [nytimes.com].

    In late August and early September, as college students returned to campus and some institutions put into place rigorous testing programs, the number of reported infections surged. Yet because serious illness and death are rare among young coronavirus patients, it was unclear at the time whether the growth of infections on campus would translate into a major health crisis.

    But since the end of August, deaths from the coronavirus have doubled in counties with a large college population, compared with a 58 percent increase in the rest of the nation. Few of the victims were college students, but rather older people and others living and working in the community.

    In other words, college students are like the fleas which spread the black plague throughout Europe. And all because some people wanted to get back to normal as fast as possible, disregarding even the most basic health measures to prevent the spread of covid-19.

  • pretty new, in what's supposed to be a residency program. They're doing 5x12 hour shifts a week. Not a COVID ward (not enough experience, they're fresh out of college) but point is that our entire healthcare system is on the verge of collapse and only an intense amount of overtime is keeping it running.

    We're a few weeks away from Death Panels (e.g. rationed care and turning people away from hospitals). And still we can't get lock downs. Meanwhile Mitch McConnell & the GOP are blocking stimulus aid n
    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      I understand your frustration, I noticed more people are dismissing this covid (not wearing mask, figure nothing will happen to them). I got into a pretty horrible argument with a friend who began yelling at me, saying stuff like "all those people that died had complications to begin with!" I was keeping my distance from others, some I will have to keep further.
    • It's Pelosi & the Democrats who are refusing to have a bill not laden with pork.
    • In California we returned to lockdowns (at least, depending on what you mean by lockdown).

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