New COVID-19 cases continue to fall at a rate of about 12 percent per week. There’s still no sign of a winter wave. Alaska remains the only state with more than 100 new cases per 100K population per day, and it seems to be plateauing at that high rate.
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 10/16/2021, 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.
Oh, Canada.
No hint of a winter wave in Canada either:
That matters because, in general, the Canadian and U.S. pandemics have been in sync with each other. And, our winter wave started in and had its worst impact on our cold-climate states. Together, those factors make Canada something of a canary-in-a-coal mine, vis-a-vis our winter wave. But so far, there’s no sign of a winter wave there, either.
OTOH, Canada has done a better job of vaccination than we have.
Source: Government of Canada.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 10-16-2021.
As with the U.S., Canada has not authorized COVID-19 vaccines for children under the age of 12. So that’s an apples-to-apples comparison on the vaccination rate. Makes me wonder what it’s like to live in a country where the population is somewhat more rational. Or, at least, more willing to get vaccinated.
Britain started it.
The United Kingdom started its Delta wave well before the U.S. And at this point the only thing that we can say for sure is that Britain is proof that vaccination rate isn’t the only factor in play. They continue to have very high new case rates, despite a higher vaccination rate than the U.S.
They’ve plateaued at just under 40,000 new cases per day for the two-and-a-half months. The United Kingdom has a population that is almost exactly one-fifth that of the U.S., so that’s the equivalent of 200,000 new cases per day in the U.S. Or, if you reference the U.S. graph above, they are more-or-less living with a per-capita new case rate equal to the peak of the last U.S. winter wave.
In any case, the longer the U.S. situation situation persists — no sign of a winter wave — the less likely it is that we’ll see a winter wave.
Next, I’m going to re-do my search for counties with no apparent COVID-19 in circulation. That’s my opening step in asking the question, if this isn’t heading toward a winter wave, where, exactly, is it heading?
