A study in England (Imperial College, et al) exposed 36 young volunteers to COVID and watched the disease develop.

It was an early version of COVID (prior to Alpha).  Symptoms appeared within 2 days on average.  Initially it developed in the throat, but by 5 days was majorly in the nose.    
Half the volunteers got infected, 2 of which did not get symptoms.

Virus shedding was as high in the asymptomatic cases.

"Participants were exposed to the lowest possible dose of virus found to cause infection, roughly equivalent to the amount found in a single droplet of nasal fluid when participants were at their most infectious."

"Among the 18 infected participants, the average time from first exposure to the virus to viral detection and early symptoms (incubation period) was 42 hours, significantly shorter than existing estimates"

"These levels peaked at around five days into infection on average, but high levels of viable (infectious) virus were still picked up in lab tests up to nine days after inoculation on average, and up to a maximum of 12 days for some, supporting the isolation periods advocated in most guidelines."  
(The isolation periods havebeen reduced to 5 days by the CDC.  That's post-symptom, so about 7 days post-infection)


"While the virus was detected first in the throat, significantly earlier than in the nose (40 hours in the throat compared to 58 hours in the nose), levels were lower and peaked sooner in the throat."

The document "COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report, Week 4, 27 January 2022" from the UK Health Security Agency has some graphs on vaccine effectiveness against Delta and Omicron over time for different vaccines & booster combinations when measured for symptomatic disease, hospitalization, death, infection, transmission.  (From the Steve Shafer Feb. 1 COVID update)

There are other good data in the report.  For instance, % and amount of antibodies in blood donations in UK by age and month (lowest (9%) in 70+; highest(34%) in  17-20yo).  Pregnancy outcomes.

BNT162b2 = Pfizer;  mRNA-1273 = Moderna
Apparently in the UK, the Moderna booster was the half-dose as in the US.

Notice the fall off of the booster over time versus the original doses over time.

Symptomatic disease.
Pfizer: 
 

Moderna: 
  

Hospitalization
Pfizer: 

(no Moderna)

don't know how impactful, but kind of fun.  may be paywalled . . . 

https://www.winespectator.com/articles/n...tion-rates

With the relatively milder Omicron, the prior statistics of how many COVID-positive patients are in hospitals with COVID is no longer adequate.  Previously, it was a pretty good assumption that those in the hospital with COVID were there because of COVID.

When Omicron was recognized in South Africa, the representatives pointed out that there were many people in the hospital where COVID was incidental to their reason for being in the hospital.

(For instance, a woman in the hospital who had to give birth by C-section, and just happened to have COVID would be there WITH Covid.)

The first statistics I've seen on hospitalizations WITH Covid versus FOR Covid are in this San Francisco newspaper report
They indicate that about 60% of their current cases in the hospital are FOR Covid, and 40% of their current cases are there for other reasons.

I'll point out that those in the hospital WITH Covid still need to be isolated and have specialized handling, so the widespread incidence of COVID in the community increases the workload for a hospital even if none were admitted FOR Covid.

On another board, someone wanted to know about vaccination vs hospitalization.
A first question is what is "vaccination"?  1 shot of J&J or 3 shots of Moderna?   Omicron or Delta?
A second thing to note is you have to look at case rates (per 100K in the category) not absolute numbers.

The CDC site for this wasn't useful.  Their death data is a bit better, but stops just before Omicron hits.

The best I quickly found is out of the state of Washington, with data up to this week.

Case rates:
12-34yo:  case rates are unvaccinated are 3x higher than "fully vaccinated"
35-64yo:   4x
65+:  6x

Hospitalization
12-34yo:  8x
35-64yo:  11x
65+: 11x

Deaths
65+:  15x
 Note:  partially vaccinated are now dying at the same rate as fully vaccinated.  The death rate for unvaccinated is falling faster than for fully vaccinated.

Some indications may show that some areas may have hit the peak in Omicron infections and are on the way down, but still much higher than the previous peaks:

Boston wastewater is showing a clear decline in COVID detection (not down to pre-Omicron levels).
Likewise, Santa Clara County wastewater is showing a flattening or a decline.  The Palo Alto treatment site shows a clear decline.

HOWEVER, it looks like virtually all of the country is still on the way up (including Sacramento & Monterey) according to wastewater measurements.

Climbing:  Houston ; Wisconsin ; Ottawa ; Colorado ; Ohio ;
Mixed bag:  a variety of sites around the SF part of Northern California (as measured by a Stanford project, SCAN) including one that is at Stanford (Codiga), which is in a clear decline (peaked Jan 2)

This is NOT the time to relax.  Prudence would be to wait a few weeks before going out into crowds to make sure things are really getting down to the levels that we used to know as crazy high levels of infection.

As I looked around at wastewater numbers, I saw a few sites that had no real increase in virus signature in their wastewater even up to early January.  So I expect there will be pockets that will burn later than the areas already starting to come down.

Other interesting COVID wastewater sites
UCSD COVID dashboard shows exposure locations and shows a campus map with wastewater indications for each building.
Missouri shows variants detected each week in wastewater around the state.

Worldwide links to wastewater dashboards.  (there are far fewer than I expected.  Lots of places doing some measurements, but not posting them consistently.  The CDC is trying to collect the data and post it, but it is not ready yet.)

I am not competent to evaluate this. I do not know the reputation of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Given the disclaimer, this covers some of the first data I've seen covering long covid.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.full.pdf

They look at people that got COVID (separately in two different waves). Then they compare long covid symptoms between people that didn't get covid and people that did.

I've not seen good enough coverage of what hospitalizations are looking like, so I thought I'd try to find it.
TL/DR:  The percentage of those with COVID that are admitted is up, but I didn't find data clarifying whether current hospitalizations are climbing.  If they aren't climbing, then the increasing percentage just represents the community-level of infection.

Santa Clara County (my home county):  The county used to post county-wide capacities, taking into account staffing levels.  That data is gone.

California:
I found this data for California counties, but it is a couple of weeks old (Dec. 24 as I write this).   I don't know whether they are describing capacity at (then-current) staffing levels, or at normal staffing levels.  EDIT:  For ICU, they indicate this is staffed beds.  But I compared against San Mateo County's data, which had no more than 65 ICU beds since Dec. 30 with no more than 6 available on any day while this site ("week of Dec. 31") showed 78 ICU beds with 23 available.

As of January 4, the California Department of Health indicates good numbers (> 15%) of staffed ICU beds available in each region.  And, that's without any widespread postponement of procedures.  Two regions are under 20% available. The state as a whole is at 20.1% available, which is at the bottom edge of where it has been since 1-Dec, but not dropping much (yet?).  The number in the ICU with COVID is steadily increasing (Dec. 1: 16.6%; Jan 4: 24.9%), but that may be because of the community rate of infection ("incidental COVID").

The CDPH did not show current hospitalization numbers that I found.  Month-old data are meaningless as there were so few Omicron cases then.


Other:
Texas Medical Center (Houston):  They have 3+ levels of ICU commitments.  Normally they run at Phase I.  If there are serious outbreaks, they can go up to Phase III, with provision for going beyond that.  Currently, they are at 90% of Phase I beds in use, of which 20.4% have COVID.  I do not believe they have required postponing of procedures at this time.
NOTE: I believe these numbers are assuming full staffing.  If, say, 20% of their staff were out sick, the number of STAFFED ICU beds might be lower than shown in these graphs.  My guess is they are actually pushing into their Phase II.

TMC is showing the number of COVID cases in the newly hospitalized to be at the same level as the peak of Delta in August (ie, the highest ever). These numbers are a little uncertain because of issues in reports over New Years.


CDC. You can see graphs of the number of COVID-19-positive admissions (per 100K) for jurisdictions and age groups.  The daily new COVID-19-positive admissions for the US has just passed the August-Sep 2021 peak but not yet reached the peak of a year ago.  California numbers are lower but climbing faster.  The US went up by 70% week over week for the week ending Jan. 2, while California was up by nearly 110%.

Again, the data doesn't show numbers as to how many are getting admitted for COVID symptoms or complications, and how many have COVID incidental to their reason for being admitted.

Another chart shows 10% of Emergency Department visits have COVID, about a third higher than Aug-Sep 2021.

Healthcare workers with COVID have exceeded the highs of a year ago.

So, the CDC has reduced the recommended quarantine time for isolation. It seems ... suspect. 

[twitter] https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/...4975705088 [/twitter]

One concern (other than we cannot really take the CDC at their word) is that the longer isolation time was based on a distribution of infectious periods in the population, and they chose a mark which protected against (I believe) upwards of 99% of that range, a standard that was much stronger than "the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness." What percentage of infected people are still infectious beyond five days?

Also, should "the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission" be the focus? We know that about half (last I looked, this may be dated) of cases happened while folks were presymptomatic. But I imagine that the isolation period helped boost the proportion of cases where transmission occurs early in part because ... many people isolated once they knew they were infected. Now it seems that people may venture back out with masks that don't fully protect others while still infectious, even if they appear to be over it. 

They also continue to say to wear nothing more than a "well-fitting mask" instead of N95s or KN95s or better. 

Am I wrong for thinking this is another tremendous misstep by the CDC?

From Steve Shafer (Stanford Anesthesiologist)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, but Covid was here,
So we had to be extra cautious this year.
We all hung our masks by the chimney with care
In case Santa forgot his and needed a spare.
With Covid, we couldn't leave cookies or cake
So we set out Purell for dear Santa’s sake.
 
The children were sleeping, the brave little tots
The ones over 5 just had their first shots,
And mom in her kerchief and me in my cap
Had just settled in for a long winter's nap.
But we tossed and we turned all night in our beds
As visions of variants danced in our heads.
 
Gamma and Delta, and now Omicron
These Covid mutations that go on and on
I thought to myself, "If this doesn't get better,
I'll soon be familiar with every Greek letter."
 
Then just as I started to drift off and doze
A clatter of noise from the front lawn arose.
I leapt from my bed and ran straight down the stair
I opened the door. An old gent stood there.
 
His N95 made him look pretty weird
But I knew who he was by his red suit and beard.
I kept six feet away but blurted out quick
"What are you doing here, jolly Saint Nick?"
 
"Where's your presents, your elves, your reindeer ,your sleigh?
Don't you know that tomorrow will be Christmas Day? "
And Santa just stood looking sad in the snow
As he started to tell me a long tale of woe.
 
He said he'd been stuck at the North Pole alone
All his white-collar elves were working from home,
And most of the others said "Santa, don't hire us!
We can live off our Pfizer stock thanks to the virus."
 
Those left in the toyshop had little to do.
With supply chain disruptions, could make nothing new.
All of his reindeer were in a bad way,
None of them able to pull Santa’s sleigh.
 
Dasher and Dancer were in quarantine,
Prancer and Vixen refused the vaccine,
Comet and Cupid were in ICU,
So were Donner and Blitzen, they may not pull through.
 
And Rudolph's career can't be resurrected.
With his shiny red nose, they all think he's infected.
Even with reindeer he couldn't go far.
Each border required a new PCR.
 
Santa sighed as he told me how nice it would be
If children could once again sit on his knee.
He couldn't care less if they're naughty or nice
Provided they received their vaccine shot twice.
 
But then the old twinkle returned to his eyes.
And he said that he'd brought me a Christmas surprise.
I unwrapped the box and opened it wide,
Starlight and rainbows streamed from inside.
 
Letters whirled round and flew up to the sky
And they spelled out a word that was 40 feet high.
There first was an H, then an O, then a P,
I saw it spelled HOPE when it added an E.
 
"Christmas magic" said Santa as he smiled through his beard.
Then suddenly all of the reindeer appeared.
He jumped into his sleigh and he waved me good-bye,
Then he soared o'er the rooftops and into the sky.
 
I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight
"Get your vaccines dear friends, Merry Christmas, good-night".
Next morning I awoke from my sweet Christmas dream
Of a beautiful world without Covid-19.