This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2021-6-18, 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.
This week has been the lightest week, disease-wise, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Things are continuing to improve; the reopening has not lead to an increase in cases so far.
The seven-day rolling average of cases is running about 11,400, down from about 14,300 a week ago. The hospitals have been admitted about 1919 people per day, nationwide, with Covid, down from 2,492 a week ago. Deaths are running around 284 per day, down from 350 a week ago.
All in all, that's a lot of things getting better rapidly: at a pace of about 20% improvement over the week on all three indicators.
The one thing that isn't getting better is the B.1.617.2 variant, which continues to grow rapidly. Various news outlets are reporting that the variant is now making up about 10% of infections in the US. The real number is closer to 25% -- the problem is that journalists are using the CDC's "Nowcast" which, if you read carefully, estimates the prevalence of B.1.617.2 two to three weeks ago. Not that this makes a whole lot of difference -- it just means that the B.1.617.2 variant is likely to become dominant in the US around mid-July, not the end of July.
The question, once the variant becomes dominant (as in, it makes up over 50% of the infections), is whether it will lead to a rise in cases in the US. One thing that suggests it might is the basic math, where it looks about 60% more infections that the currently dominant (B.1.1.7) strain, and the current R is somewhere between 0.8 and 0.9 -- that would suggest we should see a bump. On the other hand, B.1.617.2 is already the dominant strain globally, and globally we're still seeing cases drops. So that suggests no bump.
Regardless of which way it goes, vaccines are continuing to work against B.1.617.2, so it won't be a concern for the 87% of Americans over 65, and for the over 65% of American adults, who are already vaccinated. And by some estimates, as many as half of the unvaccinated adults already had the virus, and so should be largely immune as well.
So even in a bad scenario, where B.1.617.2 does an extremely good job of spreading, it's hard to imagine it infecting more than 5-10% of the population. There's just not enough susceptible people left.
Sources
For basic Covid Stats, see the CDC COVID Data Tracker.
For the prevalence of the B.1.617.2 variant, see outbreak.info.
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