The U.S. now stands at 9 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day. Plus or minus a little statistical noise, that’s where it’s been for the past four days. In all likelihood, I’d guess that we’ve now reached the bottom of our Omicron wave.
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 3/22/2022, 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
Obviously, one way to deal with this is to declare victory. Particularly if this is as good as it gets.
But a thoughtful person might be keeping an eye on the U.K., where they are going straight from their Omicron wave into their son-of-Omicron (BA.2) wave. At present, the incidence of new cases there is 20 times the level seen in the U.S.:
Source: Johns Hopkins data via Google search.
But the good news for the U.S. is that there’s still no sign of an upturn in new case rates, even among the states that reached their Omicron wave peaks first. The graph below divides states into five groups based on the date on which their Omicron case rate peaked. There’s about a two-week difference in peak date between the early-peak states and the late-peak states. And yet, the only difference is that the latest-peak states continue to show falling new-case rates. All the other categories merely show a stable rate for the past week or so.
The upshot is that whatever is happening in the U.K. (and Australia, below), isn’t happening in the U.S., yet.
Source: Johns Hopkins data via Google search.
One surprise from today’s data is that son-of-Omicrion (BA.2), the more-contagious variant of Omicron, is not spreading as fast as expected in the U.S. As of the most recent CDC data published today, that still only accounted for about a third of new cases. New case rates in the U.K. didn’t really start to take off until BA.2 became the dominant strain (and they cancelled all of their COVID-19 hygiene mandates).
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 3/22/2022.
Plausibly, that’s related to the lack of upturn in the U.S. compared to other parts of the world.
Anyway, I look at those two bits of data — the international situation, and the slower-than-expected growth of BA.2 in the U.S., and my conclusion is that it’s still a bit early to say we’re not going to follow in the same path as the U.K.
In the U.S., we can ignore COVID-19 for the time being because it now poses a much lower total risk (for hospitalization, and probably for death) than typical seasonal flu does, for those who are vaccinated and boostered. Really, in terms of your overall odds, it’s now less dangerous than flu.
But it’s not over yet.
