Coronavirus dashboard for July 28: you’re reading the right blog, ghoulish edition
Coronavirus dashboard for July 28: you’re reading the right blog, ghoulish edition
In writing about the economy, I make use of long and short leading indicators to forecast coincident indicators. In writing about COVID, the template isn’t much different: cases lead hospitalizations by about 2 weeks, which in turn lead deaths by about 2 weeks. Put another way, cases lead deaths by about 4 weeks.
Four weeks ago I wrote:
“we have to start worrying about COVID again, because the delta variant has now taken hold in up to 8 States with rising new cases. All of those States have fewer vaccinations per capita than the national average, and most of them much below the average. By the end of July, I anticipate that it will be clear there is a new ‘wave’ of cases in the relatively unvaccinated States.”
In the past 4 weeks, cases have nearly quintupled from about 11,300 to 55,000. Hospitalizations have risen about 2.5x. And here is what deaths nationwide look like, vs. cases:
Deaths have been trending slightly higher and just made a 1 month high.
And here are deaths in the bellwether States that were first hit with Delta, plus a few others:
Deaths in some of those States have started to go parabolic.
In the last 4 weeks, the US has gone from about 47% fully vaccinated to just under 50% fully vaccinated – i.e., not much of a change.
Here is what is going to happen in the next month. Deaths are going to follow cases. Cases have nearly quintupled.
Deaths are going to nearly quintuple – I.e., to a level of about 1,000/month.
‘It hit me like a wall’: This is what it’s like to have a breakthrough case of COVID-19
CDC Internal Report Calls Delta Variant as Contagious as Chickenpox
“may spread it just as readily, if less often.”
What on Earth does that mean? If it spreads less often from a source, then almost by definition it doesn’t spread as readily from that source. Is this just more of the ever-changing fear-mongering?
@PaulS
The Delta variant spreads just as readily from vaccinated people who receive a sufficient dose. But in populations with more vaccinated people, it spreads less often because there are fewer infected people to transmit it.
The ever-changing fear mongering is from Fox and the GOP. Ignore them, and pay attention to the science.
Hope that helps.
So my questions are is Moderna studying booster shots like Pfizer, can I jump the gun and pay for a booster shot or are we going to have to wait for the government to say we can? Second, did anybody else read the summary of The NY Times this morning suggesting that Covid—including the Delta variant—goes through a burn out phase quite apart from human response?
People with outbreak infections can pass on virus
@Terry,
“These conditions can make it possible for the region to initiate the endgame phase of epidemic management, wherein the disease is slowly made to burn itself out through a combination of social distancing, sanitization, contact tracing and preventive testing.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20069443v2.full.pdf
That’s a great model, except its hard to get an airtight lockdown, and it doesn’t take into account the wide range of individual variation. It would be great if it worked.
Vaccinated People May Spread the Virus, Though Rarely, CDC Reports
Vaccinated People May Spread the Virus, Though Rarely, CDC Reports
Rate of breakthrough cases in Cape Cod cluster raises questions at CDC
When swimming across a river, then do not stop midway across.
If breakthrough infection is more probable than believed in the past and such infections are more likely to be capable of further infections than previously understood and there was not much momentum for any mandatory vaccination or “negative” incentives for vaccinations say in May, why the heck would we move that way now when the collective benefits of vaccination should be thought as being less than imagined in May? The arguments that it is a fundamentally a personal choice seem stronger if the vaccines are weaker in curtailing transmission, since reducing or eliminating transmission was the source of the critical public benefit.
looks like we hit 100,000 new cases yesterday, if you figure that states like Nebraska that are refusing to report any had a few…..we now account for more than 13% of the new cases on earth; we had more new cases this past week than India and Brazil combined….
letting this Delta variant spread like than among a population that is 50%+ vaccinated is just breeding new mutants that will have more vaccine resistance, and possibly be more contagious and/or deadly…
Yes to the last sentence.
“pay attention to the science”
most people do not know “the science,” so this means “pay attention to what I tell you is the science.”
trouble with that is that even if you know the science, you fall into believing in “the science” without bothering with the details of transmission, or the details of explaining it clearly enough to convince anyone who is not ready to accept “the science” as an explanation.
of course in the end politics trumps science, so you may be on the right track after all…except for all those people who believe in another politics.