Infections are Running Rampant in my Social Circle

Wow, I don't know about you, but lots and lots of my friends & acquaintances have been getting infected this spring. To a person these folks are fully vaxxed and boosted and they have respect for the virus—i.e., they are not COVIDiots who take risks with it.

I work with a number of people who are in their late 20s to early 30s. Since January something like half of them have tested positive.

Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR and his family of three have gotten it twice. Once was during international travel and this delayed their ability to return home because of strict quarantine regulations in Singapore.

I know another family who had two kids under 5 years old back in January, and the whole household got infected. They now have three kids under 5 and had to cancel a planned Memorial Day party because they all got infected again.

Then a friend who is 75 attended a wedding where all those in attendance were supposed to have been vaccinated and boosted. He came down with a mild case a couple of days later. This is a guy who—like me—had taken every possible caution and was fully vaxxed and double-boosted.

As far as I know, most of these infections are unreported. The last guy's case may have been reported because he was prescribed Paxlovid by a physician. Fortunately he did not have a relapse as do some people who take that drug. 

For all the others, the cases were mild and were detected with at-home tests. That means no infection was reported.

This is why experts are saying the current case counts are a gross underestimate. Even epidemiologists—who have access to data like antibody readings from blood tests and wastewater monitoring and models to crunch all those numbers—don't know what is going on.

One of them estimates that case rates are actually eight times higher what are being reported. But he admits you have to take that estimate with a grain of salt because it is "getting harder to get a firm handle on the current ascertainment rate."

If his SWAG is correct, it means the Maricopa County infection rate of 25.9 per 100K people I reported in Thursday's weekly numbers summary is actually 206.4 per 100K. That's not far from the 2022 record of 281.5. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests, then, the virus is running rampant. Be extra careful, especially if you have underlying risk factors or interact with people who do.


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