Does it seem like a lot of people you know have caught Covid recently? This seems like a good time for an explanation of why the current Covid situation is probably worse than you think. You should be wearing a good mask whenever you go indoors and probably whenever you're in an outdoors crowd.
The basic problem is that Omicron BA.5 is becoming the dominant variant. It is extremely contagious and also has shifted enough genetically that vaccinations and previous infection provide a good deal less protection that was the case with earlier variants.
Here are three images that show where things stand. Here's a link to the CDC web site:
COVID-19 Integrated County View
The first image is the CDC's "Community Level" map. In many ways it is a measure of how likely you are to get a hospital bed or an ICU unit if you come down with severe Covid. About ten days ago this map was mostly green. It has gotten much worse since then.
The second image is the CDC's "Community Transmission" map. It functions as a measure of how much Covid transmission is in your community. This is a very important measure if you are trying to avoid a breakthrough case for yourself or a family member who is elderly or immunocompromised.
This map has been mostly red since the Omicron BA.2 spike started this spring. The CDC site defaults to the first map, which is generally used for policy decisions. You have to go into the dropdown menu to select "Community Transmission" to see this map.
The final image is a couple of graphs of testing and testing numbers for my home county of Oakland County, Michigan, over the last year.
One of the major changes in testing from this winter's initial Omicron spike is the much greater availability of home testing kits. So actual total-case rates are believed to be significantly higher than the officially reported rate. (I've seen a lot of different estimates as to how much more, so I won't speculate here. Let's just say "much more".) As you can see, the number of reported tests are way down, but the current positivity rate is approaching the levels of this winter's initial Omicron spike. The rate increased 3.23% to 17.55% in just the last week.
So, yeah, Covid is bad out there right now. It's almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better.
Do yourself and your friends and your family a favor. Mask up.
