As a refresher, early December 2020 was in the midst of the largest "surge" to date. Vaccinations were at the end of their testing phase, and wouldn't begin to be administered for another month. So 2020 was basically a vaccine-free year. And for at least the first half of the year, most indoor functions were closed.
Going into doing this update, I was definitely prepared for a couple of things. The confirmation rate was certainly going to rise as the number of confirmed cases increase. But with the vaccine being distributed since late winter 2021 and over 60% of the country and state being vaccinated (over 75% in Santa Clara County), I thought the increase would be relatively minimal. And for the same reason, the death rate lower. And all of that happened. But not to the degree I had thought.
So let's start local and work our way up to global. On December 1, 2020, Santa Clara County, with a population of 1,948,407, had 35,945 confirmed cases going back to roughly late February, or nine months. That's a confirmation rate of 1.8%, so less than 2% of the counties population had contracted the virus by then end of 2020. With 487 deaths reported, the death rate was a pretty low 1.3% (1.3 out of every 100 cases resulted in a fatality).
Fast forward to yesterday, As of December 1, 2021, the number of cases reported was 152,268 and deaths were 1,930. So from December 2, 2020 through November 30, 2021, cases went from nearly 36,000 to just over 152,000 (+ 322%), and deaths from 487 to 1,930 (+ 296%). With the increase of new cases, the confirmation rate not surprisingly rose from 1,8% to 7.8%. Still a pretty low number, considering. The death rate did drop from 1.3 % to 1.2%.
On the surface, the rate of case increases and deaths were a bit surprising to me, considering that a heavy percentage of the Santa Clara County population was vaccinated during the past six months or so. I guess that goes to show you how bad it could have been had no vaccines been available.
Things were slightly worse for California as a whole, as the confirmation rate went from 3.2% in December 2020 to 12.7% on December 1, 2021 (1,272,041 cases to 5,090,300 - a 300% increase), while deaths rose from 19,440 to 74,781 (+ 284%). The state death rate did drop slightly, from 1.5% to 1.4%.
Nationwide, cases rose from 13,996,455 to 48,490,805 (+ 246%) or a confirmation rate increase from 4.24% to 14.7%. Deaths rose from 273,490 to 781,556 (+ 185%) with a death rate of 1.6% (down from 1.9%).
So taking a look at all of these numbers, two things in particular caught my eye:
1) The percentage increases/decreases in all three locations where very similar, despite Santa Clara County having a much higher vaccination rate (nearly 80%) than California or the US (both approximately 60%).
2) It's surprisingly clear that 2021 was a worse year for Covid than 2020, despite vaccinations being available since February 2021.
But that fact that these numbers increased as much as they did despite the vaccine indicates how bad things could have been without them. Even to a catastrophic level. Just over 6% of new cases are people who were vaccinated (known at the positivity rate), compared to over 24% unvaccinated (the last I looked), so the vaccines seem to be working. It's evident that the Delta variant was much worse than expected. Need to consider as well that pretty much everything was opened up in late spring/early summer, including things like movie theaters. Also, for a time, masks weren't required indoors. So I'm sure all of that contributed to higher numbers in 2021.
In case you're interested, worldwide, the number of cases grew from 64,547,851 to 263,536,848 (+ 308%), a confirmation rate increase from 0.8% to 3.3% (based on a 7.9 billion worldwide population). Deaths rose from 1,493,716 to 5,232,983 (+ 250%), but the death rate dropped from 2.3% to 1.9%..Not including the 3.3% confirmation rate, which was surprising low compared to the US (14.7%), the percentage increases/decreases were similar to those of the Santa Clara County, California and the US.
So what are the positive takeaways? Percentage-wise, 97% of the worlds population, 84% of the US population, 88% of the California population, and 92% of the Santa Clara County population has not contracted Covid. And of those that have, over 98% survive. Of course, if you convert those percentages into numbers, it still adds up to a lot of people. Can't forget that.
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