The Hits Keep Coming

Why is the media suddenly sounding like Team Reality?

The Great Backpedal is picking up steam, and MSN is getting in on the show now as well.

COVID hospitalizations 'spiked' in California's most vaccinated county. Except they didn't.

"It's increasingly important for us to distinguish between patients hospitalized with COVID vs. for COVID as we see more and more spread in the community," county Health Officer Dr. Matt Willis said. "As prevalence increases in the community, we're going to collect more hospitalizations incidentally."

The concept of "incidental COVID" — where patients who are in the hospital for other reasons other than COVID-19 are found to be COVID-19-positive and subsequently counted in coronavirus hospitalization numbers — has always existed, but is being discussed more widely as the omicron variant causes more asymptomatic cases than previous strains. UCSF's Dr. Bob Wachter said that incidental COVID leading to inflated totals was a "non-issue" in the past but a "bigger issue" now, while top national advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci raised the "with COVID" vs. "for COVID" distinction when discussing reported increases in pediatric hospitalizations.

No, it’s not ‘increasingly important’ to make this distinction, IT WAS IMPORTANT THE WHOLE TIME. The difference is that now it is POLITICALLY IMPORTANT to make the distinction.

Looking at the bigger picture, at least 42% of Marin County's reported hospitalizations on Monday were "incidental COVID," a figure somewhat in line with other locations. The Florida-based Jackson Health Center reported that 57% of COVID-19-positive patients were "admitted to the hospital primarily for non-COVID reasons" while a study of hospital admissions from a city in South Africa found that 62% of patients had "incidental COVID-19." 

"We have to revise our method for counting hospitalizations," Willis said. "The state, in their reporting process, needs to solicit this distinction. What we are going to see is a seeming surge in hospitalizations tied to community transmission that doesn’t signify an actual increase in severe COVID illness."

Now, where have I heard that before?