A month ago, the State of Utah allowed its counties to lift their mask mandate, if they had any. Since then, I've seen a lot less people wearing masks. Many business establishments, though, still require customers to do so. But hey, their businesses, their rules. From a practical stand point, there's no reason to keep up with the masks if you are in contact with people outside.
The state is unique in that it let the counties decide whether or not they'd lockdown or have mask mandates. It's kind of Utah's way to defer to the counties when it comes to controversial policies.
The state has been keeping a nice website with statistics and information. According to the website, here are the overall numbers since last spring:
Keep in mind that Utah has about 3.3 million people as of this year. Only about 12% of the people caught Covid and that figure includes repeat cases.
The number of available hospital beds was something of concern 6 months ago. It's nice to see that the burden has eased and we are back to almost normal levels. To give you a perspective, here's the visual for when to worry about number of hospital beds:
As expected, senior citizens are the ones that should take precautions when it comes to Covid. The chance of hospitalization is still 40-60 even if you have preexisting conditions. I'm not saying you should gamble with your health, but age is a significant factor.
I don't like the way how ages 25-44 belong to the same group. It's about as silly as ages 1-14. But, it does show that Covid doesn't cause severe issues as often like it does in adults. I am willing to bet most of the hospitalizations in the 25-44 group came from the older side. As you can see, ages 45+ make up over two-thirds (67.7%) of the hospitalized cases.
While we are on the subject of hospitalizations, the percentages in the chart above seemed about the same. Well, the ventilator use seemed to have gone up. Double, in fact. Not sure why that is, but not much different from 6 months ago.
And that segways into the mortality rate, which has dropped to 0.6% over the last year. Covid is deadlier to men than women, and that's when you go into the 70s. Old people dying from a disease? That's nothing new. Of course, this does not take into account of all the potential permanent damages as result of the virus.
Since we are in the woke age, it's worth noting the ethnic distribution of Covid-19. For whatever reason, Hispanics and Pacific Islanders are more susceptible to catching it. My theory is that people of those ethnicity tend to live with extended family under the same roof. Although the virus seem to be more fatal to Native Americans and Asians (1.43% and 0.86%). Compare those to the 0.6% average, they don't seem too bad. I guess you could make something out of it's twice as deadly to the former, but it'd still be a low number.
When it comes to vaccination, Utah is most likely ahead of many other states. It helps to have a smaller population. A third of the state's population had gotten both their doses. The question becomes, where's the goal post? That's the biggest question when it comes to the pandemic and its related policies.
As we move into the summer, it looks like the trendline is following the one from the year prior. Something tells me this will return later this year. I hope we have better therapeutics by then. If there's one thing my state has done right, it's not killing people's livelihood. Other states that have done otherwise will have bigger problems down the road.
We shall see where life brings us in Q4.