CDC Data: Up To 90% Or More Of Americans Already Infected

This thing is finally ending

Seen this below?

That's the number of daily coronadoom infections reported to the CDC -- which they mistakenly call "cases", but let that pass.

The bump up is, as you've heard, caused by the Ominous Omicron. More infections are being reported now than ever before. Of course, testing is now at the highest rates ever, too. Some three million tests each and every day, and increasing!

The testing is asinine, but the soaring infections are to be celebrated. It's terrific news. I mean it. Here's why.

Because up to 90%+ of Americans have already been infected with the coronadoom, one way or another. Once that figure reaches 100%, surges in deaths should subside to background levels, like flu, and any remaining justification for declaring a crisis or "emergency" evaporates.

These are the CDC's own numbers, not mine.

For some reason, the CDC's report "Estimated COVID-19 Infections, Symptomatic Illnesses, Hospitalizations, and Deaths in the United States" made only a minor splash, or more like a faint ripple, when it was released last fall, but it should have been trumpeted far and wide for the bright picture it painted.

First, do you recall all those "Panic If You Don't Have Symptoms!" headlines from 2021? Fretting doctors fretted that many didn't even know they were infected, or that many mistook their doom infection as a cold or allergies. They wept that this was awful because it meant people wouldn't panic to the level required.

What it really meant was that a good many infections were never officially reported. That was the conclusion of the CDC. They said that only "1 in 4.0 (95% UI 3.4 -- 4.7) COVID–19 infections were reported".

The interval is the result of a statistical model. Which can be critiqued in various ways, none of which, however, are of interest to us today. Except to mention the interval is almost certainly too narrow, because it is parametric and not predictive. But let that pass, too. Let's take the CDC's word for it. They are Experts. And we're supposed to love our Experts unconditionally.

The point is that back in September 2021, the CDC said there were already "146.6 Million Estimated Total Infections", of which there were "124.0 Million Estimated Symptomatic Illnesses". That makes for a 15% asymptomatic rate, incidentally.

Which I'll emphasize: 15% of those infected never knew it.

Panic!

Why? Because, well, how dare you take your non-illness non-seriously!

The calculations the CDC did, while they can be critiqued, are the right idea. And there's no reason to have only done them once. We can do them now.

Last September, there were an estimated 146.6 million already infected. Out of 329.5 million, or so. That makes about 45%.

In other words, even by last September about half the country had already been infected.

That rate has only gone up. How much?

As on Monday evening, there were just under 65 million officially reported total infections. Assuming (a big assumption) the CDC's same calculations are valid, this means that some 220 million to 305 million Americans have already been infected. That's 67% to 92% of the population.

Great news, as promised. Tell your friends. Even better, tell your enemies.

We have to moderate this somewhat, I think. For one, we're not accounting for the chance of reinfection. Like flu or the common cold, you can catch more than one variant. I have no idea what figure to use here to represent the entire population. For fun, I used 10%. That is, of all the officially reported infections, 10% of them are reinfections. This means the official total count is a bit too high because of double counting. And so are the other estimates.

There is some evidence the Ominous Omicron is sufficiently different than other doom variants, so the reinfection percentage might be higher. Who knows?

Let's look at our picture again:

The black line is cumulative infections, since the beginning of the panic. The red line is the upper bound of all infections estimate using the CDC's method. The blue is the lower bound estimate.

The dotted lines beneath the main ones are the same, but knocked back a bit by the reinfection rate (the 10%).

Another caveat. This is all people, not broken down by age. Those under 17 are much more likely to have never suffered at all, and therefore never to have noticed their infections. I've said it a hundred times, but twice as many kids this age have died from pneumonia over this same period---according to the CDC. And about 10 times as many died in car crashes.

Didn't you know?

Never mind.

And, hey, did you also know that in the once United States prior infection isn't noted before immunization?

This is a big deal. Because about 4 times as many people have been infected than have been reported, it means the success of the vax has been over-estimated.

Panic enstupidates.

Anyway, the elderly, those north of 75, have done the vast bulk of dying of the doom. It's much more likely their infection rates were much better estimated.

With all those maybes and who knowses in mind, we can produce a crude estimate of when the infection rate gets near 100%. The time at which everybody, or most everybody, has got the doom one way or another. It will likely never get to 100% exactly because there are always people who are sickeningly always healthy.

You can now look at the Crude Estimates. They are Crude. They are nothing but regressions starting from 1 November 2020 until Monday. Why start then? I answer: why not? It's when the line took on a regular shape. Plus, changing that start time doesn't change the predictions much.

The predictions clearly aren't capturing the skyrocketing Ominous Omicron infections. That is, it underestimates them. But the prediction acknowledges that these respiratory infections, like they always do, fade in spring with the coming of the sun.

There are so many unknowns, including unknown unknowns, that it's silly to try to make the prediction more precise. I also don't include the reinfections in the predictions.

Recalling that all models, including my own, only say what they are told to say, my model says that anywhere from this coming mid March to all the way to next January is the time at which everybody (or near enough) gets infected.

It doesn't have to reach 100% because of herd immunity, the point at which infections drop to a minimum because it becomes difficult for bugs to spread given that those who were already infected defeat new infections easily.

In golden days of yore (winter 2021), the percent of infections to get to herd immunity was put at 70%. Some said 80%. That's when we were still allowed to discuss the topic, before the Cult of the Vax corrupted minds.

The high prediction says we're already there, or nearly. Whereas the low prediction says summer or fall.

No matter what, this thing, to the great disappointment of the Zoom class, is coming to an end.

Buy my new book and own your enemies: Everything You Believe Is Wrong. And visit me at my blog wmbriggs.com.