From almost the very beginning of the pandemic, there has been a tacit understanding that the data collected on COVID, its prevalence, and its spread are somewhat less than ideal. Specifically, data regarding new infections are highly misleading. This goes double for a milder but more infectious variant, such as omicron, running wild.

More to the point, data about hospitalizations are similarly misleading because they count every infected person who happens to be in a hospital as a COVID hospitalization. This is true even in cases where people were hospitalized for completely unrelated ailments — the flu, heart attacks, broken legs, gunshot wounds, and the rest. If they happen to have the coronavirus, they are considered COVID hospitalizations. That never made any sense.