The US spread seems like it has been driven largely by holiday period, lax rules which are loosened too early at every turn, and winter. Perhaps with some variant induced acceleration in California or other localities, but seems unlikely to have been the driving factor.
It also seems likely that Churchill is right. This is going to turn out to be somewhat of a false dawn as more contagious variants take root. I dont see a good reason why we wont face the challenges that UK and other Euro countries faced.
I wouldnt bet my life on vaccine 1.0 ending the pandemic. Hopefully the vax program will have gotten far enough along that when the cases spike back up the death rate still doesnt find a new peak because we have vaccinated most of the elderly/vulnerable. I think thatâs a reasonable hope/goal for the next couple of months, anything more would require a level of mitigation that the US just isnt going to undertake.
EDIT: That John Bell interview was helpful. Also actually fairly optimistic IMO. He was pretty confident weâd get a handle on this with a combination of vaccines and anti-virals within a reasonable timeframe, just open to the fact that we might need to update the vaccines and close borders which would move the timline back a bit (months not years)
Yeah. I donât follow these things daily (aside from looking at the report from just my small city) and was kind of shocked that itâs sooooooo much worse than it was as recently as November. Maybe, as LetsGambool said, the holidays had a lot to do with it.
Maybe itâs just because rates have increased dramatically around here for the first time, but every day somebody I know, (or a school staff or child - since we receive emails about those), is testing positive. Not sure if itâs a YOLO thing but it sure doesnât seem like people are being more careful. Although my dad has agreed to stay home until his upcoming vaccinations are completed, so thatâs good for my family.
USA #136 absolutely has it in us to do one more devastating peak before enough people are vaccinated to mitigate spread. I think the next one starts in a month with a baseline of 150k rather than 30k the last surge started from. I hope your correct that deaths never peak again, it does seem at least plausible we will get enough of the vulnerable population vaccinated to prevent a new daily death record.
Hard to believe that CAâs holiday period drove local infections so much higher than other statesâ holiday periods. Those CAâers must have been really badâŚ
This kinda reminds me of the early March 2020 UP Covid thread where the first country hit outside of China was Italy, whereupon we theorised that Italy must have got it because they do that double Euro kissie thingy and it would never be as bad in the UK / US because we donât. Those mucky Italians slobbering everywhere. Little did we know the virus was already embedded.
To contain the new variants, presumably you need to lock everything down (including ALL schools Dan) before it becomes dominant. Because it spread during the UK and Danish lockdowns. Israelâs used to a lockdown or three and look at their graph. Fauci says it will be dominant by March.
Itâs not credible to say that Californiaâs recent surge was attributable to superCOVIDâeven US level monitoring would have caught that. Itâs going to be a huge catastrophe though, because weâre just going to ignore it until thereâs a huge spike, and it wonât be containable with the quarter-added lockdowns that weâll try. Hopefully a lot of the most vulnerable populations will be vaccinated by then though, so we wonât see a massive spike in deaths.
Iâm not attributing it to superCOVID (UK Variant), thatâs yet to come IMO
There are US scientists equating CA to a new variant not sequenced elsewhere - I think that is very possible.
Itâs possible but I bet US doesnât produce that statistic. I know alot of under 75âs have been vaccinated in the US and with the only approved vaccinations requiring very low temps, US isnât reaching that population wholesale. Everyone vaccinated on a pharmacy waiting list = another 70+yr old facing risk in a month or so.
UK has vaccinated 75% of over 80âs population. Itâs a guess but with the current US vaccination programme 35% of the same is probably a generous estimate IMO = lots more dying IF the UK variant takes hold (any immunity might take 3 weeks in the elderly so youâd want your vaccine today!)
I dont think the argument that the new variants drove CA spread so far is particularly compelling. Other states also spiked hard. You point out the mitigation needed to stop the variant spread in Europe, yet US cases (including CA) are almost uniformly declining with, if anything, a loosening of restrictions over the last month.
I do think it is likely that you are correct that the new variants are going to spread throughout the US and potentially really catch us with our pants down. The only advantage we will have over UK is simply that the vaccination of the most vulnerable with be further along. I also think you are likely correct and hardened borders are needed/coming.
With the lack of analysis before late November 2020, no-one in the US can be confident of whatâs really lying beneath.
Itâs less about case numbers now, more about how the variant is changing in those detected cases and youâd need to be analysing 50% of those cases to know where things will be in 3 weeks time. And those that are really looking, can see where things might go after that.
Thatâs great that cases are declining. UK had 200/100k when the new variant hit, went to 800/100k in about 3 weeks. Ireland from 200/100k to 1200/100k. US is currently at 600/100k so hopefully rate drops lower beforehand or US might set a record.
Governments around the world need to pull their fingers out and collectively tell the drug companies what they should be doing. Manufacturing needs to be upped x5/x10 and if the drug companies themselves canât do that - they canât obv in the short/medium term - then G needs to build or appropriate the necessary facilities.
Last time I looked there were 7.6bn+ people on this planet and this is going to happen again so we need capacity in the future and Africa shouldnât have to wait for 2025.
probably something Biden already was aware of when he said 1.5m vaccinations per day, but couldnât say outright. a lot of the commentary was, âthatâs a very tall order!â
The UK has offered to carry out genomic sequencing for other countries around the world to help identify further new coronavirus variants.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock made the pledge in a speech to Chatham House think tank this afternoon, as the government becomes increasingly concerned over strains evolving to evade vaccines.
Since the initial outbreak of the pandemic, new Covid variants have been discovered in the UK as well as in Denmark, South Africa and Brazil.
Hancock offered the support of a new variant assessment platform, to be led by Public Health England (PHE), to analyse the genetics of coronavirus samples.
PHE said it would give âcrucial early warningâ of any mutations that might cause the virus to spread faster, make people more ill or possibly reduce the effectiveness of vaccines.
Nations will be able to request the support through the World Health Organisation or directly to the UK.
UK doing the work for the US CDCâŚ
âThe CDC has reached out to UK officials and is reviewing their new mortality data associated with variant B.1.1.7,â a CDC official told CNN Saturday, using the scientific name for the variant first spotted in the UK in November.
Iâve found this site to be really useful for seeing both absolute trends and how the various states are doing relative to one another (the provinces are listed there too, but you have to do a lot of scrolling to find them). Ignore the published date, it updates daily.
Cliffs: Almost everywhere is trending down and has been for a couple weeks.
WASHINGTONâThe Biden administration on Tuesday said it would boost the supply of coronavirus vaccines sent to states by about 16% for the next three weeks and will purchase enough additional doses to vaccinate the U.S. population with a two-dose regimen by the end of the summer.
Senior administration officials said the federal government is working to purchase an additional 100 million doses each of the Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. vaccines, increasing the total U.S. vaccine order by 50% to 600 million from 400 million. Officials said they expect the additional doses to be delivered over the summer.
The purchases will provide enough supply to vaccinate 300 million Americans in a two-dose regimen over the summer.