The U.S. now stands at 48.3 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population per day. Week-to-week growth is still 8%. This wave continues to generate more hospitalizations per case, but fewer deaths per case, than prior waves. 
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 8/27/2021, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html.
As a group, FL, LA, MS seem to have topped. But the states just below them, in terms of new cases / 100K / day, still show rapidly rising new case counts.
The national picture on hospitalizations and deaths still remains something of a puzzle. In the .gif below, the red line is new cases. The yellow line flips between hospitalizations and deaths. The Delta wave is generating more hospitalizations per new case, but fewer deaths.
I suspect that’s due to the shift in the age mix of new cases. In a nutshell, COVID-19 deaths have been strongly concentrated among the oldest old, and that population is now roughly 80% fully vaccinated. I’m going to download the CDC’s person-level de-identified data and see if I can prove that. If I can (via a statistical what-if known as age standardization), that’ll be posted next.
