The UK as Delta wave trailblazer for the US
Coronavirus dashboard for July 19: The UK as Delta wave trailblazer for the US
An initial note: I am on vacation this week, so posting is likely to be sporadic. I’ll still hit the important data.
Now that the Delta wave is well and truly here in the US, let’s compare it with the UK experience, which has been about 7 weeks ahead, to get an idea of where we are going.
Here is the long term view:
As I said, the UK resurgence due to Delta started about 7 weeks before that in the US.
So the experience in the UK is likely to give us a good idea where the US will be in about 7 weeks.
So here is a look at cases (narrow line) and deaths (wide line) in the UK:
In the autumn and winter wave last year, as well as the Delta wave this year, deaths followed cases with about a 4 week lag.
A similar 4 week lag between cases and deaths shows up in the long term view of the US data:
Now let’s take a close-up look at cases in the US (blue) and the UK (orange) over the last 8 weeks:
Cases in the UK have doubled roughly every 2 weeks, from a low of about 1900 to over 45,000 now. In other words, cases now are over 20 times higher than they were 8 weeks ago. Cases in the US bottomed about 3.5 weeks ago at 11,300, and have since risen to over 32,000, roughly a tripling during that time.
So if we project US cases to double every 2 weeks over the next 8 weeks, as they have in the UK, that puts us at 512,000 cases daily in the US by mid-September (more than double the US’s peak last winter).
Now let’s look at deaths:
In the UK, deaths bottomed at 8 per day about 6 weeks ago. As of now they have risen to an average of 42 daily, an increase of over 5x. In the last 2 weeks, they have more than doubled. In the US, deaths bottomed at about 215 per day less than 2 weeks ago, and have risen to about 270, a slow increase that is similar to that of the UK in the first several weeks after their bottom in deaths.
If the US follows the same course as the UK, 1 month from now the US will have about 1000 deaths per day.
But remember, deaths follow cases with a 4 week lag. So if the US has 16x more cases in mid-September, then by mid-October there will be over 4000 deaths per day.
The question in the US is whether there will be government interventions at the State level to slow down the spread of these new cases, such as reinstating masking and distancing restrictions and shutting down certain businesses. Unsurprisingly, that is unlikely to happen in the Red States. The other alternative is that individuals reinstate some precautions, such as masking indoors, that they may have recently abandoned. At some point, I believe that *will* happen, even in the Red States (as it did last winter), but I do not know how severe conditions must be first.
What I can say is that, if cases and deaths double every 2 weeks, then in about 4 months the Delta variant will have ripped through virtually the entire unvaccinated US population, with deaths following suit about a month later.
Are the vaccination rates the same?
They are at 54% fully vaxxed, so comparable
they’ve been a bit ahead of us in vaccinations through their whole surge…their 54% is for the whole population, including children; the comparable US percentage is 48.6% fully vaccinated…
69.4% of Brits – including children – have received at least one shot; the US is only at 56.7%…
so we’re in deeper doodoo if you think vaccinations are the controlling factor…but then explain India, where Delta originated, & which has had fewer new cases than the UK over the past ten days, has twenty times more warm bodies, and only 6% vaccinated…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/indias-covid-19-death-toll-is-likely-in-the-millions-study-finds-11626792531
India’s Covid-19 Death Toll Is Likely in the Millions, Study Finds
Researchers estimated number of fatalities caused by the disease at about four million, which would be 10 times the official count
By Shan Li
July 20, 2021 10:48 am ET
NEW DELHI—The true tally of Covid-19 deaths in India following a devastating spring surge is likely close to 10 times higher than the country’s official count, marking the pandemic as one of the worst tragedies to ever hit the South Asian nation, according to a new study.
India has officially recorded more than 414,000 coronavirus deaths, but scientists and researchers have said that number undercounts the real toll. When India’s cases peaked in April and May, hospitals across the country were forced to turn away patients who later died at home, often untested.
The study pegged excess deaths—or the number of people who died beyond what is normally expected—at between 3.4 million and 4.7 million from January 2020 to June 2021, according to the report released Tuesday from Arvind Subramanian, a former chief economic adviser for the Indian government, and researchers at the Center for Global Development and Harvard University.
One estimate in the study pegged Covid-19 deaths at about four million, roughly 10 times the official count. “True deaths are likely to be in the several millions, not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India’s worst human tragedy since partition and independence,” the report said…
[In India people die at home every day from unknown causes because poverty cannot afford the medical care to determine cause of death.]
A lot of red states have actually made it to where there is no enforcement of masking and also they can’t ask if you are vaccinated prior to you walking into any business or establishment, aside from federal buildings. There is also widespread “Vax card” fraud with people getting fake ones online. I fear more people will end up overloading the hospitals again and a wave of unnecessary death will follow. This isn’t surprising given the history of the Spanish Flu and the 3rd wave was the most deadly. The biggest difference is we have vaccines and shouldn’t accept that path as an educated population.
My two cents worth from out in the country. OK back to winter planting.
Mr. Smith,
“…as an educated population…”
[Assumes facts not in evidence. What education are we giving by lowering the bar and social promotion?]
I submit as evidence the 2016 POTUS election.
The question is – are there enough vaccinated individuals in any given location to keep the Delta (or any other) variant from overwhelming the available medical facilities there? As always, the answer is “it depends”.
It looks like Covid-19 is going to be like the flu in one respect. Even though vaccination will prevent illness and death, there will still be illness and death forever because some people just will not get the vaccine, no matter how easy or cheap it is.
Dean:
You gotta have something more substantial than an “I am asking . . . “
Dr. Michael Osterholm would have to disagree, sir.
I think the case count “iceberg” is maybe even more “icebergy” than last winter. Although some what disappointing overall, vaccination rates among higher risk groups is pretty good. So the unvaccinated skew to better overall health….not every single one, but more so than the full population December 2020. Getting tested is harder today. Objectively it probably isn’t that hard, but fall/winter there were at least 3 Prevea (health care company) drive-thrus, Lambeau Field mass test site, Brown county fairground, and Bellin and Aurora certainly had drive-thrus. It is possible that the fairground is still open, but it’s on a lightly traveled road. My sense is a probably a higher level of mild or asymptotic cases in an environment of less testing, at least around Green Bay.
Well Eric:
– “So the unvaccinated skew to better overall health . . . not every single one, but more so than the full population December 2020.” Better health? What evidence do you have to support this contention of yours? How do you pick who survives and who does not. And even if you do survive, the evidence of months of lingering side effects is prominent.
– “Getting tested is harder today. Objectively it probably isn’t that hard, but fall/winter there were at least 3 Prevea (health care company) drive-thrus, Lambeau Field mass test site, Brown county fairground, and Bellin and Aurora certainly had drive-thrus.” Getting ested is harder only because people have been convinced by political interests, the impact of Covid is a hoax, the vaccine will cause injury, and they will not follow a doctor’s guidance for Covid (masks, isolation, inoculation, etc).
– “My sense is a probably a higher level of mild or asymptotic cases in an environment of less testing, at least around Green Bay.” I sense we have lit a fuse for a higher level of Covid amongst those avoiding vaccinations and a milder form amongst those who have been inoculated. Fifty-four, 60, or 70-something percent inoculated still leaves a large percentage of the population unprotected and a potential cluster ripe for illness of the present form, a later mutation, and furthering more variations.
The question is How have your views and Republicanism served the constituents which follow such views?
a little breakdown & some background:
In England, concerns grow about a ‘notable gender split’ in COVID-19 Delta infections | Fortune
For the English, today [July 19] marks a kind of Independence Day over COVID-19 as months long lockdown restrictions are eased across the country. And yet to see how the outbreak continues to divide the nation, look no further than Twitter. Hashtags like “Freedom Day,” “Plague Island,” and “The Purge” have been trending throughout the day.
The country holds the bragging rights of one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. It also has one of the highest numbers of active COVID-19 cases in the world—and the latest wave is hitting the young and males particularly hard.
In the last week of June, men made up 55% of the COVID-19 deaths in the United Kingdom, according to the country’s Office of National Statistics. The week before, males made up 70% of all COVID-19 deaths.
Cases have also been considerably growing in males ages 15 to 40 over the past few weeks—the first time there’s been “a notable gender split” in the disease, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a research note to investors on Monday morning. The investment bank put in words the big fear that Europe may be glimpsing a kind of soccer-led spike in cases a week after the Euro Cup final match, pitting England against Italy. The gender split, Deutsche Bank analysts wrote, “strongly hints at the impact of millions of football fans watching the Euro football final.”
coincidentally, the 7 day average of Italian cases is up 103% WoW…
Pam Martens documents some of the problems with the unequivocal statement from the big pharma apologists at FDA and CDC that ” Virtually all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are among those who are unvaccinated.”
that something like this was going on was evident in the data…we are now getting the accompanying anecdotes…
as of the latest data, the UK, one of the most vaccinated countries on the planet, now has had the most new infections on earth over the past week…the US has moved up to #3, passing India and Brazil, and nipping at the heals of Indonesia…
meanwhile, Israel, with a vaccination rate similar to that of the UK, now has more new cases than Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt combined….
new cases are surging in Europe, too…in fact, just looking at the numbers, it’s almost as if vaccinations are spreading the virus..