2024 year end Coronavirus dashboard: the year COVID-19 turned into the flu

 

 - by New Deal democrat

A year ago I said that I would only update information about the state of COVID-19 if there was something significant to report. And as of the end of the year 2024 there is: deaths from COVID in 2024 have fallen to the point where they are equivalent to the upper end of a “normal” flu year. Because for the entire year they are likely to have been under 50,000.

This is an absolutely huge improvement over the first several years of COVID, and even much better than 2023. Let me review, first graphically, then with a few numbers.

Here is what the entirety of weekly deaths from COVID look like all the way back to the start of the pandemic:

You can see that deaths during 2020 and 2021 were much higher than in any of the three years since. But that’s not all.

Because when we take out the first two years, and only look at the last three, we can see that the substantial decline in deaths has continued in each year:

To quickly review, here are the deaths for each calendar year (keeping in mind that the numbers only begin at the end of March 2020):

2020: 393.0 thousand (9.2 months; 512.6 thousand annualized)

2021:  455.9 thousand

2022:  243.9 thousand

2023:  75.6 thousand

2024:  46.1 thousand

Since the data for the last three weeks of 2024 is only preliminary so far, it is likely that another 1,000 to 1,500 deaths will be added to that total, making it 47.1-47.6 thousand when final.

According to the CDC, deaths from the flu typically average between 12,000 and 51,000 annually. So this year’s total for COVID will be within that range. In fact, for the last 52 weeks of final data through December 7, there were 51,200 deaths - only 200 above the CDC’s average range - and the 52 week total has been declining by close to 1,000 since the beginning of October.

The pattern is similar when we look at infections as measured in wastewater. The original Omicron variant peaked at 23.6 particles per mL. One year later the Holiday peak was 10.99 particles. Last year at this time the peak was 13.23 particles:

Now let’s zoom in on the last 12 months. With one week left to go in 2024, there are only 4.75 particles per mL:

Although a number of States did not report through the Holiday period, meaning the estimates in the gray shaded area to the far fright are likely to be revised higher, It’s likely that the Holiday peak which should occur this week will see something like only about 6.0 particles per mL - not just only 1/2 of last winter’s peak, but under this past summer’s peak as well.

It looks like the decline in COVID can be attributed to three factors: (1) the % of people who have had one or usually multiple vaccinations; (2) the % of people who have developed some resistance by having been infected one or more times; and (3) the virus, as one expert put it, having “evolved itself into a corner.”

What does the last factor mean? For that, let me show you the following graphic from the CDC’s variant frequency site:

Every single variant currently in circulation evolved from the original Omicron variant, via BA.2, then BA.2.86, then JN.1, and finally JN.1.11.1. All the other lineages have been out-evolved and have died out.

A similar thing happened with the flu. Every single flu variant in the past 100 years has been a descendant of the original “Spanish flu” which was so deadly during and after World War 1. The original death toll declined over time to the “normal” range I cited above. That, by the way, is why scientists are so concerned about the new bird flu. If it makes the full jump to human to human transmission, it will be the first entirely new flu strain separate from that of the past 100 years.

In the meantime, we can breathe something of a sigh of relief, and hope that COVID-19 continues to wane over time.