The U.S. COVID-19 case numbers continue to be surprisingly good. The decline in new COVID-19 case counts continues to accelerate. The U.S. now stands at 100 new cases per 100K population per day, down 40% in the past seven days. Most states are now below 100 new cases / 100K / day.
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 2/5/2022, 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
Almost three weeks past the U.S. Omicron peak, and we’re still seeing no signs of the curves flattening out. Not even in the states that peaked first.
Let me engage in a little reckless optimism. If we can maintain the current percentage rate of decline for another two weeks, the U.S. average will fall below 40 cases / 100K / day. That’s the point at which my very conservative calculation suggests that the average boostered individual faces no more risk from COVID-19 than from flu in a typical U.S. flu season (Post #1400-4).
In other words, if all suns shine, we’re a couple of weeks from what ought to be national Omicron Liberation Day, or some such. If people:
- accept “flu risk” as an acceptable benchmark for the level of risk they can tolerate, and
- accept some version of the calculation done in Post #1400-4,
then that’s the point at which the average boostered U.S. resident should no longer worry about COVID risk. Or, at least, worry no more about COVID than about flu.
