New COVID-19 cases jumped up after the July 4th holiday — and appear to have stuck at a new, slightly higher level. For seven straight weeks, the new case rate was 31/100K/day, plus or minus. Now its 40/100K/day, plus or minus.
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 7/19/2022, 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
I keep seeing the occasional headline about the next big wave, and BA.5, and blah blah blah. I’m sure not seeing it. Officially-reported new cases have been at about the same level for the past couple of months. We’re still getting 300 deaths a day, more or less. We still have not topped 6000 daily new COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Of course, the headlines that just drive me nuts are the ones talking about how this bad new variant BA.5 is coming. And so, be afraid. Completely failing to take note of the fact that it’s already here. And if it were going to cause some exceptional trouble, it would have done that already.
As of the most recent CDC data, BA.5 already accounts for about 80% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 7/19/2022
At this point, I have to guess that this is just the new normal in the U.S.
I have no clue why cases have stabilized at this level. The new case rate is stable in Canada, but at one-quarter of our rate. New case rates aren’t stable in most of the rest of developed world (Europe, Australia/New Zealand, South Korea, Japan.
Source: Our World in Data, accessed 7/19/2022.
Those widely-varying rates, and the instability of new-case rates in much of the world, suggests to me that we haven’t yet reached “endemic COVID”. Whatever that may mean. All I know is that in the U.S., BA.5 took over, and not much happened.
