At this point, I could probably just copy a post from any random day in the past month or so, and I doubt anyone would notice. New cases continue to grow roughly 25 percent per week. Today’s case count of 31/100K/day is there just a matter of arithmetic, plus or minus some random variation.
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 5/19/2022, 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
If I sound jaded, that’s because I am. This wave started well over two months ago. That when cases began rising at that 25%/week rate. That’s when prompt action might have helped quash this most recent wave.
But even though that process has not changed, people won’t pay attention until we see some Big Numbers. Only when that happens do we start to see advice such as, oh, maybe people in one-third of the U.S. ought to maybe consider wearing masks again.
As if.
At this point, we have six states with new case counts in excess 60/100K/day.
- Massachusetts
- Connecticut
- Rhode Island
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Hawaii
That’s the level at which, some time back, I figured that the risk hospitalization/death from COVID-19, for a vaccinated person, was on a par with the risk from seasonal flu. Not sure I’d still agree with that, but there’s hardly any point to re-drawing that particular line in the sand. It’s not a threshold that anyone seems to recognize anyway (outside of Washington DC).
Source: Carnegie-Mellon COVIDcast.
From the above, I conclude that 60 new cases / 100K / day, and a nudge from the CDC, are not enough to convince people to up their level of COVID-19 hygiene. And so, I suspect that short of something absolutely catastrophic, nothing will. As a result, we’ll ride this Omicron-II (BA.2.12.1)wave until it decides to end on its own.
If you’re indifferent to catching COVID-19 or not, based on (say) the low current mortality and hospitalization rates, that’s fine. And if you aren’t, not. Just deal with it, as an individual, as best you can. For now, that’s the entirety of U.S. public health policy.
