2022 was the year that - from the perspective of the government and most Americans - the COVID pandemic was "over". Practically speaking, Americans just collectively stopped even pretending to take it seriously. Something like 12-13% of Americans got the most recent booster.

And yet, this year over 4X more people died of COVID than died from the flu in the most recent "bad" year. If you take the average of the numbers in the chart here, COVID deaths in 2022 were 6X what they are for the average flu season.

This is so goddamn ridiculous. Before 2020, if you had said there will be a virus that kills 6X the number of people in a typical flu season, we would have said that's SUPER serious and I think mask mandates would probably be a thing. But we're done with COVID now, no one wants to think about it anymore; just let it rip.

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Saw it on the most recent Weather Report on the People's CDC website.

    • Wertheimer [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Their source is here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00

      The halfway point for 2022's deaths was in early March, which would almost be encouraging if it weren't for the fact that circumstances are still ripe for new variants to give us another winter like last year's.