This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2021-9-24, 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.
There has been a lot of progress against Covid this week. The decline in cases is picking up steam: averaging 117,066 cases per day, down from 142,885 the week before. That's a decrease of 18%, which makes that little 3% rise a week ago look like the statistical blip that it was. A graph is attached. Hospitalizations are down 14% for the week. Deaths, unfortunately, have not stopped dropping yet, but they look really, really close to peaking. This week we averaged 1559 deaths per day, up just the tiniest hair from 1553 last week. In January, the early strains of Covid started declining. In April, the more virulent Alpha strain started declining. And now Delta, the most virulent form of Covid the world has ever seen, is also in decline. 75% of the eligible population (those twelve and over) have now had at least one shot of vaccine, and some very large portion, perhaps a majority, of the remainder have had the virus by this point. This wave has left only a small slice of the population still completely immunologically naive to the virus (that is, both unvaccinated and never before infected). The virus just doesn't have much left to work with. And what it does have left is being taken away week by week. Out of 70 million unvaccinated people, 1.75 million per week are still being vaccinated, 1-2 million are catching the virus, and several tens of millions already have. It leaves a very small and shrinking pool for the virus to spread in.
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