dan11295

Current vaccines seem to work well enough against the UK and South Africa ones at least, although some slight drop in efficiency against the South Africa one has been reported. We simply don't have enough good data about the Brazil one yet.

This number should keep dropping with continuing trends. You have to remember that 7 states now have >10% of their population tested positive (ND/SD >12%). Real number of infections is generally estimated to be 4-5x the confirmed numbers, That would result in 40-60% of the population actually exposed in those states. Between that, vaccinations and the parts of the population willing/able to be very careful not to expose themselves, the virus starts to run out of people to infect.

Basically every state is seeing steady drops here as of late last week. Should see significant downturn in deaths within 2 weeks. At this point the only thing IMHO that prevents case numbers from dropping to very low levels by April-May is rapid growth of variant with ability to significantly bypass current immunity/vaccine. This doesn't seem to be an issue with the "UK" one at least. Just saw a Report the Moderna vaccine is effective against the SA variant as well. The main danger with these variants is case number falls could be delayed if people let up on protective measures (masks/large gathering reduction) too quickly before significant immunizations occur due to higher transmission rates. Important to keep watching virus evolution. Right now I am optimistic about a somewhat normal summer, probably minus very large (100+) indoor social gatherings or packed theatres/concert halls.

Continuing to get good nationwide drops in cases, positivity and hospitalizations. Hospital numbers are -20% off peak now. Deaths should follow after about another week. the numbers are just so high it is going to take time to get it down. Assuming a slighter better CFR as we vaccinate more LTC residents I think that number will be down to ~2200-2300/day in mid. Feb based on current case numbers.

The less stringent storage requirements and single dose will help to significantly increase the speed of immunizations. Also a much more viable vaccine for the development world.

Am guessing the drop in cases is a combination a couple of things: 1. Coming off a time period where accelerated transmission was occurring due to holiday gatherings, 2. Partial herd immunity due to virus having infected a significant percentage of those unable/unwilling to avoid exposure risk, while those are able/willing to protect themselves remain harder for the virus to infect. If you relax things too much before sufficient vaccination occurs, especially in winter, spikes in cases will probably occur. I Think once Spring comes infection rates are going to very low, assuming nothing like rapid spread of a variant with high rates of reinfection/vaccine bypass happens.

Long term, the virus likely becomes endemic producing mostly mild symptoms which people won't need to be tested for, like the over 4 endemic circulating coronaviruses. The exact path from here to there is a bit of a question mark, as it depends on both vaccine uptake and evolution of the virus. We just don't have another pandemic coronavirus to definitively compare it to, although it has been suggested this is what actually happened in 1890. In that case there were waves of varying severity over 4-5 years before becoming endemic. Of course there was no vaccine then nor did we have the tools to monitor virus evolution on short time scales.

All metrics currently suggest continued dropping off the peaks earlier this month. Cases, positivity, hospitalizations all falling. Reasonable chance 7-day case average falls below 200k by end of the week. Would think deaths start a steady fall around by the end of the month. Numbers are at such a high level it will take time to get them down though, even with vaccinations coming. The only thing that would throw a wrench in declining numbers IMHO would be increased prevalence in either imported or (potentially) homegrown variants with increased transmission rates. Natural selection will favor such variants as numbers drop overall. Hopefully even if this scenario does come of pass by that time a large percentage of the most at risk have bean vaccinated. This would significantly reduce mortality and hospital strain.

The good news is it appears nationwide cases and hospitalizations have finally peaked. Deaths should peak by the end of the month. How quickly the numbers drop is still a bit of a guess though. Depends on things like how fast vaccinations ramp up and what the virus itself does.

How many years has the Atlantic have more ACE then the WPAC? Can't imagine it happens that often.

The fact of it being a much greater risk to the elderly has been known for a long time. We know ~40% of all deaths are in long term care. We also know the mortality risk for younger adults and children, especially those without aggravating conditions is minimal, thankfully. That said, there is still higher hospitalization and mortality risk for any group other than children compared to the flu, plus the risk of long haul symptoms. There is a middle ground between comparing it to the Spanish Flu (which had a different mortality curve plus many people died from what would be treatable bacterial infections today. If it happened today there would have been far less deaths) and somehow suggesting the virus has minimal risk to anyone who isn't in a care facility. There have been >60,000 deaths under the age of 65.

Cases should really drop as we move toward Spring due to a combination of greater population immunity combined with seasonal factors, IMHO.

Not likely, we will get a good portion of the way there via infection unfortunately, though.

From looking at the hospitalization numbers you see the change in hospitalizations was +7200 in last 7 days, but +5300 the 7 days prior. Since the Wednesday numbers were not impacted by the holidays, it is likely you are seeing the impacts of holiday gatherings on the numbers. It also 12 days post-Christmas, which is about the time you would begin to see more severe symptoms requiring hospitalization.

Yeah numbers today are awful, 260k cases over 4,000 deaths on Worldometer

The only thing is hospitalizations should be peaking prior to deaths peaking. Doe not make sense for deaths to have peaked just before Christmas if hospitalizations have risen 10-15% since then. AFAIK nothing new has been applied in the hospital setting to meaningfully reduce mortality.

We really need to get vaccinations moving. Current pace is not going to cut it.

Big reason the national hospital numbers are still rising is the Midwest numbers are not falling too fast while the entire southern US/4 most populated states are continuing to jump. States like Florida, Georgia & Texas are really starting to really go off the rails. 31K cases in Texas is...not good.

8,590 hospitalized in NY (+240), not great, only NY and MA still have rising numbers in the northeast really.

- In hospital: 128,210 (+2,666) - In ICU: 23,435 (+204). Similar to last week, big jump following lower reporting over the holiday weekend. Important thing here is hospitalizations are still increasing, despite the apparent peak in cases back on Dec. 17-18, ~18 days ago (and before the holidays were effecting reporting). This is different that the summer when hospital peak occurred 5-7 days after peak in cases. Nationwide positive rate is also continuing to rise from 11% before Christmas to 13.5% now.

Holidays are messing with the numbers. Will take another week until the normal reporting gets back on track.

This kind of science denial has no place on this forum. Vascular effects of Covid infection including blood clotting are becoming more and more established in scientific literature. Association of heart attacks with blood clots is very well known. Luke Letlow had surgery associated with a blood clot before he had a heart attack. FYI influenza can also lead to blood clots also due to inflammation response (which is likely a primary cause of clotting with Covid as well). https://vascular.org/news-advocacy/jvs-report-swine-flu-and-respiratory-distress-linked-blood-clots

I have been comparing the CDC excess mortality data/reported Covid deaths from death certificates for states vs reported numbers on Worldometer. Some interesting findings: Some states, mostly in the plains and mid-south (OK/MO/IA/NE/KY/AL) along with OH/WI have more reported Covid deaths (some a fair bit more) from certificates per CDC than the state numbers, even though the CDC numbers should be more time-delayed. Most states have excess mortality of about ~0.03% above reported Covid mortality. For most of the states listed above this percentage is fair bit higher ~0.06%. e.g. Excess mortality is actually about equal for WI and PA despite the 0.04% difference in the state Covid numbers/per capita IMHO this suggests some under counting is going in in these states. Conversely some states actually have LESS excess mortality, MA/CT/RI in particular, Some of this may be due to high LTC facility spread in the spring in these areas compared to general population. i.e.LTC residents who died of Covid might have died of other reasons by now. This would tend to lower the excess mortality over time in this instance.

While the UK Variant has now been found in multiple U.S. states, I haven't seen any evidence that it has become the dominant strain anywhere here yet. I doubt this was responsible for the initial fall surge in Colorado (or anywhere else in the U.S.), just like it wasn't responsible for the initial fall surge in the UK. If we see states which are in a decline in cases start spiking again, it would be a real red flag.

For context on the hospitalization numbers, there are normally approximately 800,000 staffed bed in the U.S. So roughly 25% of all staffed beds in the U.S. have Covid Patients in them.