The U.S. stands at 12 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, same as it was at the end of last week. That said, the new case rate continues a steady decline — it has just reached the point where it takes several days to reduce the (rounded) count by one.
You should probably take today’s numbers with a grain of salt. Many states did not report new data today, owing to yesterday’s Federal holiday. A few days from now, we should have a better idea of whether or not the U.S. Omicron wave is continuing to fade.
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 10/11/2022, 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
Deaths are still around 350 a day, hospitalizations are still around 3400 a day.
Flu! The musical.
Below is a U.S. map showing the extent of influenza, for the first week of October, for the past ten years. Red is bad.
Guess which one is 2022.
Source: Tedious cut-and-paste from the CDC FluView weekly U.S. map page.
I seem to be reading a lot of scary news coverage about this year’s flu season. I tend to dismiss it because it’s still too early for flu. In a normal season, that is.
But, objectively, above, it does appear that this is shaping up to be an abnormal flu season. It’s certainly abnormally early. It’s a fair guess that it’s going to be abnormally bad.
Probably not a good year to skip the flu shot.
