The Beginnings of a Third Wave

Last month we were concerned that the leveling off of new daily cases in Florida and the USA was only temporary.  Over the last four weeks of steadily increasing daily case counts (see red squares in the figure below), we are increasingly concerned that we are seeing the beginnings of the third wave as temperatures cool and indoor activities resume in northern USA (Wisconsin is especially bad now).  We are also concerned that the pressures to reopen schools for in-person learning, reopen the economy before Election Day, and the increasing numbers of maskless, crowded rallies are exacerbating the normal seasonal rise in cases. 

Some of the increasing cases could be due to improved testing.  After stalling for 2 months testing has improved as schools and businesses reopen and want to keep ahead of increased infections by increasing testing.  This has again picked up an increasing number of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases.  If this were the only reason for the recent increase in cases hospitalizations and death counts would not increase. 


In fact, after bottoming in mid-September, the number of currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the USA has been rising for the last two weeks (see blue diamonds in the figure below).  As we had pointed out before this is a leading indicator of a future rise in death counts. 

Death counts are currently stuck near 750 per day (blue diamonds in the first figure above) but will rise again right near Election Day – lagging rising cases by 2 to 4 weeks.  This is not a good harbinger for President Trump’s re-election chances.  We had suggested that he ease off on maskless, crowded rallies in September to improve his chances of reducing the death count by November but he had chosen to forge ahead with large risky superspeader events such as the Rose Garden announcement for Amy Barrett in defiance of scientific advice.  Impatience bought him a second wave in June; impatience will have now bought him a third wave. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Could Florida be the Next Epicenter in the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Image
Florida Governor DeSantis has failed to recognize the seriousness of the exploding Covid-19 Pandemic in Florida.   His slow response and poor judgment have already cost many Floridians their lives and may cost many thousands more if he fails to act now.   State Infections/M Infections Deaths Mortality Mortality Coincident Lagged5 NY            2,361 45934 604 1.3% 3.6% NJ               994 8825 108 1.2% 5.1% LA               591 2746 119 4.3% 12.7% WA               486 3700 175 4.7% 8.8% MA               466 3240 35 1.1% 5.1% MI               366 3657 92 2.5% 8.4% CT               362 1291 27 2.1% 8.2% CO                  301 1734 31 1.8% 5.3% IL       
Read more

NYC is now Worse than China 2 days after Wuhan Quarantine

Image
China announced plans to quarantine Wuhan on January 22 when the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was near 500 and threatened to go exponential or out of control.   The number of confirmed cases in NY state has now passed that threshold by 3 days and it is growing exponentially. Most of the confirmed cases in NY, NJ, and CT are located in the metro-NYC area.   If the US wants to adopt China’s successful, albeit painful, quarantine program they must do so NOW.   Many people with the benefit of hindsight criticized China for such draconic measures while others criticized them for doing it too late.   WHO seemed to be the only major organization that had praised China for its decisive action at that time.   Now is the time for Governor Cuomo, or really President Trump to adopt a strategy similar to China’s before the virus escapes the hot zones such as metro-NYC, Seattle, and San Franciso and the pandemic gets out of con
Read more

Living with Covid-19 is Living Dangerously

Image
Living with COVID-19 has become the catchphrase of the Pandemic recently even though the WHO warns that it is too early to relax our vigilance.   Pandemic weariness has taken hold and many people just want to resume “normal” life.   Moreover, some countries that have experienced the more contagious but milder Omicron variant and survived its strain on their hospital systems have encouraged others to think that they might also be able to manage the crisis just as well.   What are reasonable benchmarks to use to mark the transition of a pandemic to endemic phase that society can live with?  One benchmark is seasonal flu which can kill 20k-30k Americans, and 300k-600k globally each year.  Countries have built enough hospitals and have enough healthcare resources to handle such outbreaks each year without shutting down their economies.  In the US 30M Americans develop symptoms of seasonal flu each year and 30k die so a case fatality rate (CFR = deaths/cases = 0.1%) seems to be acceptab
Read more