Coronavirus dashboard for March 15: good news, and cause for concern
Coronavirus dashboard for March 15: good news, and cause for concern
A year ago today I wrote about the accuracy of Jim Bianco’s forecast of exponential spread of COVID-19. At that time there were exactly 2952 cases, but increasing at 30% each day, and I wrote, “I have not seen any government action significant enough to stop this exponential projection being correct.”
As of yesterday, there have been 29,438,775 *confirmed* cases – 9% of the total US population. There have certainly been many more cases which have never been confirmed by testing, primarily but not always because they were mild or asymptomatic.
The good news is that vaccinations in the US are making better and better progress. In the past week, about 2.5 million doses were administered each day. At this rate, the entire adult population could be vaccinated by the end of June.
Here’s the total number of people who have received at least one dose (just shy of 70 million), and those who are fully vaccinated (about 37.5 million):
At least partly as a result, both new cases and deaths have declined by over 75% and 60%, respectively, since their wintertime peaks:
And new cases in long term care facilities have declined by about 90% to the lowest level in at least 10 months:
But the bad news, as Dr. Fauci has repeatedly pointed out in recent days, is that the declined are plateauing, as shown in this close-up of the past 8 weeks:
Incredibly reckless behavior by the usual government suspects, particularly the governors of Texas and Florida, is almost certainly contributing to this plateau.
This is particularly of concern because there is at least some evidence that one of the new variants of COVID may not be inhibited by either of the two primary vaccines:
Declaring premature victory, as the governors in those two States have done, is a recipe for the emergence of a mutation that evades the effectiveness of the vaccines. If this becomes a real issue, I hope Biden will not hesitate to quarantine those two States and any others (e.g., Mississippi) which are similarly reckless.
Biden will not quarantine those states but having just received my second shot I will be seriously pissed if a variant emerges which kills me because of Abbott and DeSantis. I think all that any of us can do is everything we can to destroy the GOP as it is presently constituted. As Biden put it, this is a battle for the soul of America and neither his election nor the 50-50 Senate suggests the battle is over. There is every possibility that uneducated and cognitively challenged white racists, will bring this country down. I think the Abbotts, Cruzs, Hawleys, McConnells, Cottons, etc think they will thrive in the dystopian country they envision, but I think that is hubris on their part.
US to Send Millions of Vaccine Doses to Mexico and Canada
NY Times – March 18
The United States plans to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the White House said Thursday, a notable step into vaccine diplomacy just as the Biden administration is quietly pressing Mexico to curb the stream of migrants coming to the border.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the United States was planning to share 2.5 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and 1.5 million with Canada, adding that it was “not finalized yet, but that is our aim.”
Tens of millions of doses of the vaccine have been sitting in American manufacturing sites. While their use has already been authorized in dozens of countries, including Mexico and Canada, the vaccine has not yet been approved by American regulators. Ms. Psaki said the shipments to Mexico and Canada would essentially be a loan, with the United States receiving doses of AstraZeneca, or other vaccines, in the future.
The announcement of the vaccine distribution came at a critical time in negotiations with Mexico. President Biden has moved quickly to dismantle some of former President Trump’s signature immigration policies, halting construction of a border wall, stopping the swift expulsion of children at the border and proposing a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the United States.
But he is clinging to a central element of Mr. Trump’s agenda: relying on Mexico to restrain a wave of people making their way to the United States.
Anticipating a surge of migrants and the most apprehensions by American agents at the border in two decades, Mr. Biden asked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico in a video call this month whether more could be done to help solve the problem, according to Mexican officials and another person briefed on the conversation.
The two presidents also discussed the possibility of the United States sending Mexico some of its surplus vaccine supply, a senior Mexican official said. Mexico has publicly asked the Biden administration to send it doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. …