Well, maybe this is our endemic level of COVID-19. We’re now finishing out our 7th week at 33 new cases per 100K per day, plus or minus a little variation from various holidays.
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 7/7/2022, 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
When we first hit this level of cases, there was no coherence across the regions. New case rates were rising most places, and falling in the Northeast.
But now, we all seem to be singing from the same hymnal. New case rates are more-or-less stable in every region.
By eye, this is the longest “flat” stretch of the pandemic. In 2020, there was no period where new case rates were stable. In 2021 (blue line), it looks like new case rates were nearly stable for a couple of months in the spring, but that’s deceiving. That patch is the result of the first big push for immunization quashing the Alpha variant wave. The actual on-the-ground conditions were anything but stable.
We’ve also reached the point where the only variants in circulation in the U.S. are variants of Omicron. And the two most recent ones have more-or-less completed their takeover.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 7/8/2022
That’s a bit of a stretch, because it’s a judgment call as to whether or not any new variant is sufficiently important as to merit a new Greek letter. But in any case, the experts haven’t seen fit to assign a new Greek letter for anything here in the U.S. for nine months now. The first Omicron wave for the U.S. started back in November 2021.
Maybe this is as good as it gets.
