The U.S. now averages 33 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, up 22% in the past seven days.
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 5/21/2022, 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
At this point, if there is any relationship between the level of new cases and the growth rate, it’s pretty subtle. Maybe we’re starting to see slower growth in the states with the highest current case loads. The trend line below does slope downward-to-the-right. Somewhat. When this wave nears its peak, that will have to occur. It just doesn’t look like we’re quite there yet, to any meaningful degree.
Meanwhile, as the data slowly trickle in, you can see the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine booster doses eroding. The last snapshot from the CDC COVID-19 data tracker looked like this, with the last month being March 2022.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 5/21/2022
These are observational data, so they will include the effect of vaccination and all other differences (in demographics, in risk, in behavior) between the boostered population and the unvaccinated population. The big push for booster doses was in 2021, peaking around December 1. So now, six months later, those well-aged booster shots are still somewhat more effective than vaccine alone in preventing death. But they now provide little protection against having some COVID-19 infection.
Inverting that 1.5x figure, the half-year-old booster shot reduces your likelihood of any infection by one-third. Arguably, that’s much less protection than you would get by wearing a high-filtration mask.
So, will I keep wearing a mask when I’m in shared public spaces? Um, yeah, I will. Not because I’m particularly crazy or paranoid, but because I understand how vaccines work. (Post #1200, Post #959). All they do is shift the odds in your favor. And now, it looks like I can get much better odds out of wearing an N95 than I can out of an aged vaccine booster. It would be irrational of me to have gotten a booster six months ago, but to refuse to wear a mask today. So I continue to wear a high-filtration mask in high-exposure situations.
This, despite the fact that I got a second booster just weeks ago. The bottom line remains that anything that reduces the quantity of virus you are exposed to reduces your risk of infection. The question isn’t mask-or-booster. It’s whether mask-and-a-booster better than a booster alone, and then, separately, whether you value the reduction in risk more than the hassle of wearing a mask.
Where I live (Fairfax County, VA), we’re now up to 50 new reported cases / `100K / day. And rising. Nobody knows what the actual rate is, compared to the officially reported rate. For me, for now, at current new-case rates, the answer to the second question above remains yes. Yes, I think the reduction in risk is worth the hassle of wearing a mask.
