I last updated my visualization of COVID-19 case progression in the U.S. about a year ago. I stopped mostly because I no longer trusted the data. Self-testing has rendered CDC case counts pretty useless since almost no one self-reports a positive self-test. I considered using death counts instead, but that was both depressing and only marginally informative given the advances in treatments.
I settled instead on tracking hospitalizations since that number is likely accurate and would seem to be a fairly good indicator of just how bad things are. If people are well enough to self-test, self-medicate, and isolate/recover at home, we can (at this point) call that a win and move on. However, when people get sick enough to go to the hospital, that’s indicative of a broader problem.
The video below shows relative COVID-19 hospitalizations across the U.S. using weekly hospitalizations per capita by state. The darker the shade, the higher the per capita hospitalization rate. (The raw data was downloaded from the HHS healthdata.gov website.)
The relatively calm periods track fairly well to prior vaccine availability (both the original doses and the boosters) but those periods are followed by resurgences as COVID-19 mutates or people get over-confident or some combination of those and other factors.
In short, it ain’t over yet.