Omicron is on the decline, but deaths from Omicron have now surpassed the number of deaths from the “deadlier” Delta wave. Though Omicron was “milder” so many people were infected all at once, that a smaller percentage of deaths was still incredible high.
Complacency as the numbers drop has helped fuel COVID deaths. Americans are done with the pandemic, but the pandemic is still not done with them. There are still about 150,000 new COVID cases being reported every day.Since testing is spotty at best now, that is an under estimate.
America isn’t the only country to become complacent. Denmark had declared that it is done with all COVID restrictions. There are no longer any indoor mask mandates, vaccine passports at bars, restaurants, and stadiums or mandatory isolation for infected individuals. As of February 7, 2022, the infection rate in Denmark was higher than every other country’s in the world. Despite the high numbers there were falling ICU admissions and shorter hospital stays. This is because the country has a very high vaccination rate of 61% with two doses and a boost, and thus deaths have been largely decoupled from the high rates of infection.
In America only 27% of the population has two doses and a boost. The U.S. is averaging about 90,000 hospitalizations, 17,000 COVID patients in ICUs and 2,400 daily COVID deaths. Lets say a 737 aircraft were to drop from the sky. A full flight might have 130 passenger on board. That means we are experiencing the equivalent of 18 plane crashes every day. This is higher than the COVID peak in April 2020 of 2,200 deaths a day, and higher than the peak in September 2021 of 2,100 deaths a day. Americans have become complacent and accepting of incredibly high levels of needless death.
Now that the number of deaths from COVID drops, humanity is getting back in the business of killing one another, as today Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine. The death tango from disease and war continues.