The official U.S. new COVID-19 case count still stands at 31 per 100K per day, up 7% in the past seven days. The U.S. average has been at more-or-less the same level for two weeks now.
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 6/4/2022, 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
The CDC shows us at well under 300 deaths per day, still. Hospitalizations appear to be topping out around 3900 per day.
Surely I can’t let a day pass without spreading a bit of gloom and doom. Today’s nugget of negativity is that we’re less than a month from what ought to be the low point for the year, for new cases, based on the first two years of the pandemic.
So I look at that and I say, well, maybe this is about as good as it gets. We’ve got this ludicrously contagious disease — it’s been a while since I’ve seen anybody even venture a guess as to the R-nought, but the last one I recall was somewhere around 21. (Compared to maybe 1.5 for seasonal flu.) We’re at the point where reinfections are common and vaccines do almost nothing to prevent infection (though they are still quite effective against severe infection).
But eventually, I come to my senses and look around. If there is some “natural” rate of new infections, it surely isn’t apparent by looking internationally. Below is a view of the world’s daily COVID-19 infection rates since 1/1/2022. Although the new infection rates appear to be stabilizing around the world, they are stabilizing at vastly different reported rates in different areas. The U.S. is the middle of the pack — a very spread-out pack.
Source: Our world in data, annotations mine.
You can’t rationally look at that and conclude that we’re stuck at our current new case rate forever. My conclusion is that plenty of industrialized nations have lower rates than we do right now. And there’s no obvious reason why our rate should remain permanently high.
