This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2021-2-26, and is archived here as a curiosity. Minor changes to formatting, as well as basic copy-edits, may have been made in the transition from Facebook post to web format.
Time for the weekly running of the numbers. Three main ideas: (1) the basic disease numbers are a little wonky but mostly encouraging this week, (2) some of the details of the next few weeks are a bit blurry, and (3) we appear to be absolutely still on track to beating the pandemic over the next few months.
(1) The basic numbers
There are four main numbers that the Covid Tracking Project reports each day: tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Based on what we've learned over most of the last year, we can see that when a holiday comes along, less data is reported for a few days, and then more data is reported a few days after that. Basically, there is an artificial low, then an artificial high. This applies to tests, cases, and deaths -- even though people keep dying and getting infected, there is a brief disruption in recording deaths and infections. Then the data-collectors, whoever they are, get back to work and catch up, and you get a fake little spike in those numbers. The coroners come home from their holiday and start reporting whatever deaths piled up on their desks while they were gone, etc.
The only number that doesn't drop or spike for holidays is hospitalizations, which makes sense. Hospitals are staffed around the clock every day, and report their number of patients like clockwork. So if you see a sudden spike in everything except hospitalizations, you're likely looking at some kind of disruptive event, like a holiday.
So when, on February 22nd, everything but hospitalizations showed a small but noticeable spike that has now lasted four days, the most logical conclusion is that things slowed down during Snowmaggedon 2021 and then everyone got back to work and cleared out their backlogs the next week.
So when we see that Covid Tracking reported an average of about 71,000 cases per day this week, compared to 69,000 last week, this probably is happening for the same reason that more tests were conducted this week -- not a real change in the direction of the virus, but a statistical blip. Similarly, this week's 2092 deaths per day seem barely lower than last week's 2101, but under-reporting during Snow Week and catch-up reporting the next week probably explain that.
The hospitalizations are continuing to drop every day, and currently sit at 51,000, down from 60,000 a week ago.
(2) A blurry next few weeks
With the exception of snow week, the data has very smoothly gotten better and better in every way since January, but it is unclear exactly what happens next. The British covid strain has been making up a larger and larger percentage of our cases, and the latest data from the Helix Research Team seems to put it at about 15% of our cases. As the British variant becomes more common, this may lead cases to start rising again for a while. But the virus's days are numbered.
(3) The vaccines are rolling out well
Like everything else, the rollout of vaccines slowed down with the snow. The US has shipped 16 million doses of the vaccine in the last seven days, a pace faster than previous weeks, bringing the total to 94 million doses shipped. Pfizer and Moderna are planning to bring that to 240 million doses by the end of March, which would require shipping about 32 million doses per week throughout March. This does not count Johnson and Johnson, which has not yet been approved but which will almost certainly be approved shortly. They are planning to ship 20 million doses by the end of March, adding about 5 doses per week to the 32 million Pfizer and Moderna doses: 37 million doses per week.
If Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson are correct about the speediness of their upcoming shipments, then the 32 million Pfizer and Moderna doses will be enough to fully vaccinate 16 million people a week. Johnson and Johnson are producing a one-dose vaccine, so that would at this pace vaccinate another 5 million people, bringing the total to 21 million people per week. When you consider that 45 million people are already vaccinated, and that there are only about 210 million American adults willing to get vaccinated, that kind of pace would put us about eight weeks from everyone willing being fully vaccinated.
So whether or not cases rise over the next two or three weeks, things look very good when you think about the next eight or ten weeks.
Graphs
The graphs below are taken from the Covid Tracking Project, which releases its work under the CC-BY-4.0.
The writing on this page is released under the CC0 1.0 license. The four graph images are screenshots of the Covid Tracking Project, which releases its work under the CC-BY-4.0.