This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2021-3-19, 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.
The news about the virus is good this week, at least in the US. Three main ideas: (1) deaths, cases, and hospitalizations are all dropping, (2) the news about the British variant seems to get less worrying by the way, and (3) I say this every week, but vaccine progress is moving along faster than ever.
(1) Deaths, hospitalization, and cases
The most important news this week is in deaths. Over the last week, an average of 1049 people died each day from the coronavirus, down from 1453 the week before. For comparison, over the 13-week flu season, 670 deaths per day would be a very rough flu season (like the 2017-2018 flu season), and 350 deaths per day would be a pretty typical flu season (like the 2016-2017 flu season). While the coronavirus has overall been much worse than the flu, the situation shows every sign of improving to where, one day soon, the coronavirus will be doing less damage each day than the flu did in recent years.
About 33,000 people are in the hospital with coronavirus, down from about 35,000 the week before. This is continued progress.
Over the last week, we've averaged 53,463 diagnosed cases per day of the coronavirus, down from 66,571 the week before. But the week before was a bit skewed by really high reporting on March 8th, so the decline over the past week probably wasn't quite as good as those numbers suggest.
But all those indicators are heading in the right direction.
(2) The British variant
As everyone's probably heard by now, in December a variant of the virus was discovered which is more transmissible than regular coronavirus. Because it spreads faster, it has become a larger and larger part of the overall coronavirus scene in the United States, and it now sits at about 50% of cases. While this is unfortunate, because it means we have more cases than we would have otherwise, still, things aren't nearly as bad as it appeared early on they might be.
So far, we have not seen a run-up in cases in the US generally, or in Florida, the most affected state, where cases continue to drop. This may be due to the very large amount of vaccination we've had so far -- Europe's not doing as well as the US right now, and they've partially stopped even what little vaccination they're doing over a panic about blood clots.
(3) The vaccine rollout
In Europe, some people have had blood clots after taking the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Some people have blood clots even without the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. So far, crunching the numbers makes it look like the vaccinated folks have less blood clots than the general population, which would seem to imply that the vaccine isn't causing the clots.[1] But a number of countries have halted distribution, less than 10% of E.U. citizens have been vaccinated, cases are rising, and various sorts of lock-downs are occurring.
The US is in much better shape, and is quite a bit closer than last week to the finish line on vaccinations. There probably won't be just one moment where we say we finished the job, but a series of moments.
Today, Ohio has expanded vaccinations to people 40 and up. On March 29, all adults are eligible.
Currently, in comparison to the 124 million Americans who have told pollsters they made up their minds to get the vaccine, about 77 million have had at least one of the shots, which leaves a gap of about 47 million people. Currently, 37 million more doses have shipped than been administered, so if all those doses were given as first shots, that would leave a gap of only 10 million. And 10 million shots is about three days' worth.
Of course, it'll go a little slower than that, because many of the shots shipped will be used as second shots, but it's still looking likely that most people who make it a priority should be able to get a shot in the next four weeks if they decide to.
No model is perfect, but the IHME model estimates that deaths should drop to about 650 by the beginning of May, at which point this thing is about as deadly as a rough flu season. By the end of May they're calling for about 350 deaths a day, like in an average flu season.
And if we can get the point where flu comparisons make sense, that would be a wonderful situation.
Normality is coming.
Sources
Deaths, cases, vaccinations: CDC Covid Data Tracker.
State by state numbers: Worldometers.
British Covid: My Helix Research Team.
Various vaccine states: Bloomberg.
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