dan11295

Was looking at OH Valley metrics outside of Michigan. IL, IN, OH, PA all are up 20-30% in hospitalizations in last 2-3 weeks to go along with increases in cases and positivity. Similar to here in MA. hopefully no other states start spiking more significantly like Michigan has.

Regarding the lack of flu cases in many countries (including countries with very few Covid cases like Australia), it is probably due to a combination of things. These include distancing/public health measures, relative lack of international travel, and potentially the fact that often only one type of respiratory virus might be dominant in the population at a time. (i.e. seasonal flu is generally dominated by one strain, and trying to predict this is important for flu vaccinate effectiveness). It will be interesting to see what happens with influenza once Covid becomes endemic. Why we have flu seasons is still not entirely understood. But might be due to a combination of biological, climatic and behavior factors. Pandemic Covid has behaved differently than flu, see the southern U.S. summer surge last year.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-variants-of-the-novel-coronavirus-in-canada-1.5296141 There seems to be a higher percentage of P1 variant cases in BC than in the other provinces. Canada also has a higher percentage of P1 relative to B.1.1.7 compared to the US. Still haven't seen any hard data that the P1 variant is actually causing higher hospitalization rates relative to number of cases, just anecdotal reports.

CDC Vaccination numbers for Michigan for those 16+: 16.4% are 2-weeks after 2nd dose, 22.9% are 2-weeks after 1st dose.

I don't know if there is an official declaration. If the general sense, I would imagine this would be when most areas can return to life with minimal restrictions and without ongoing significant amounts of excess mortality. The pandemic is certainly not yet over, cases and deaths overall have risen worldwide in the past 2-3 weeks (Brazil is responsible for a lot of that, but numbers are up in other places too)

I am sure a major part of the drop in average age of hospitalized patients is a significant portion of the older demographic is now vaccinated. That stat isn't indicative of anything other than that unless a higher % of cases in that age range are being admitted. I have yet to read anything specific to that effect in regards to Michigan

Have been reading discussion re: ability to further mutate. Clearly there is some preferential selection for the existing spike mutations, as they have evolved independents of each other. But there is likely a limit as to how much it can mutate without the virus weakening itself.

You are never going to get down to 0 cases and deaths, unrealistic when the virus will almost certainly become endemic, even with vaccines as they do not block all infections (and some will decline to take the vaccine). Ultimately the goal is to get the mortality/health/health care system impacts down to an acceptable seasonal level, similar to influenza. I would think that happens by June-July at the latest.

As mentioned in the tweet above, MI is seeing the biggest spike. PA & NJ also really up. NY has been consistently high. Starting to see IL, MD and MA (where I am) make a move upward as well. Right now the 21-day time lagged CFR in Michigan is ~1.5%. Not far below where it was in December ~1.65% I am hoping this number starts dropping with the latest surge there. Regarding the breakthrough infections. They are going to happen, we know the vaccine isn't 100% effective. The #1 reason to vaccinate is to reduce risk to hospitalization/death to a low enough level so its not a cause of significant excess mortality. The vaccines are VERY good at that even against variants so far.

Most of the damage shown was to larger, seemingly well constructed homes. When you consider that fact it looks like solid EF3.

looks like that storm weakened a bit on the last scan?

Hopefully it mostly missed Brent and Centreville proper, but large TDS regardless,

Looking at other states besides Michigan am beginning to see not just cases but positivity and hospitalizations starting to rise again. PA and NJ are two examples. Would like to hope vaccinations are ramping up fast enough to blunt another spike in mortality. Even if hospitalization jump a bit if the average age is lower mortality will still drop as younger hospitalized patients have a much higher survival rate. That said there are been new surges in a few countries with vaccination rates comparable to the U.S., Chile and Serbia most notably. Eventually vaccine driven immunity will win out but it might take another month or two to really push toward that.

There are two turkey vultures that like to park themselves just outside the front door at the office building I work in.

Michigan cases are up 75% in the past 2 weeks. With positivity up from 5.0% to 8.6% and hospitalizations also up, that doesn't look like a data artifact for me.

Looking at case trends many states are either basically flat or dropping slowly at this point. A couple of states are up a bit (Michigan being the most notable). I am guessing there may be a few states with short term jumps in numbers like Michigan, but the combination of greater vaccine uptake and moving into Spring should result in further downward case trends in about a month. Hospitalizations/deaths should keep falling even if cases jump a bit in the short term.

Michigan is the only state in the US seeing a clear rise in metric right now. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/transmission/variant-cases.html Worth noting that Michigan seems to have a high number of B117 variant cases. Don't know if that's a potential factor. Haven't seen anything specifically comparing the % of B117 cases in MI compared to other states.

It is not going to magically go away. What is the most likely scenario is over time natural+vaccine immunity along with longer term virus evolution, will gradually turn Covid from a virus with relatively high mortality into an endemic virus (like the other 4 common coronaviruses) with generally mild effects. A few years from now you may catch it but you wont need to get tested for it nor is it likely to send you the hospital, even if you are older. Nor will we need to restrict social activity to keep hospitals from being overburdened/prevent significant excess mortality.

This would be about 200-300 deaths/day (We have never dropped below 500-550/day since last March). Or course just getting the numbers down that low doesn't mean anything by itself, the UK was average <10 deaths/day during last summer. Ultimately you need herd immunity to finally move beyond the pandemic phase. I am hopeful we are there by late spring/early summer (seasonality/vaccination combo). What next winter looks like is a bit of a guessing game. I am sure there will be some Covid around, Variants with additional immune evasion are possible. But thankfully should not be anything like this past winter.

It has now been a year now since the first deaths were reported in Washington State. There is no question people just want to start living their normal lives again. Believe me I want to as well. I just hope these states aren't "jumping the gun" by opening too much while we are still in winter and before the J&J vaccine really gives us the vaccine push we need. I do feel the risk of another spike is low though. By the way, last IHME update no longer implies any jumps in cases due to variants, and shows a steady case decline.

Positivity rates are still dropping, that's whats more important. The raw case/test numbers were just up a bit due to Texas backlog and holiday last Monday,

Part of the reason Wilson never acknowledged it was likely to avoid impact on morale as we were involved in WWI at the time. Also a lot of reporting on it in the U.S. was suppressed. It is generally referred to as the "Spanish" flu was because the country was neutral during the war so the press wasn't under as much restrictions.

No one is going to mandate masks for the seasonal flu. The masking orders were issued as an emergency response measure. Once Covid moves into its post-pandemic phase (hopefully by summer with enough vaccinations) there is no reasonable justification for continuing with emergency rules issued for the purpose of controlling the pandemic.

Numbers have stopped dropping nationwide, but last week was depressed due to both Monday holiday and the weather (Texas especially). Will need to wait until next week to see if its a real trend.

The J&J single shot will significantly accelerate the vaccination process. I agree I am also getting tired about hearing about every new "variant". That all generally have similar mutations anyways. Last CDC update now shows over 600k excess deaths in the past year. Worst states per population: NY (State), NJ, MS, AL, AZ (All >0.25% of population). 0.35% in NYC. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid This a a good site that aggregates available worldwide excess mortality data. Shows that trying to compare countries based on official numbers alone can be ill advised. Good evidence of significant under counting in many places due to either lack of testing (e.g. Mexico), collapse of health care infrastructure (e.g, Ecuador), stricter criteria for classifying deaths (Russia), or likely suppression of data (Belarus, Egypt, Uzbekistan).