dan11295

I would agree on rate of decline being likely to slow down. Selection pressure is going to really start to favor any more transmissible variants, plus more restrictions are started to be relaxed. Been keeping an eye on Europe. France/Italy have had cases stabilize and numbers are starting to go back up in central Europe. The UK Variant is believed to be a factor in that, particular new spikes in places like Czech Republic. Am still watching Florida as a bit of a bellwhether here in the U.S. given their apparent higher percentage of the variant compared to other areas of the country.

The good news we are at the point where a good percentage of the most at risk of hospitalization/deaths have at least had 1 dose of the vaccine. Even if another spike occurs mortality rates should be lower. Additionally, new therapies are in late stage trials which may further reduce mortality. Finally getting results of clinical studies with Ivermectin which do suggest benefit there(not just reports of hospitals having success in a non-quality controlled setting). With hospitals less under strain you can target new therapies, even if their supply limited, to higher percentage of patients. That said we are not out of the pandemic phase of this until we get herd immunity, The virus will certainly become endemic (like the four common coronaviruses), but vaccines in the short-medium term, new treatments, and likely long term tendency of the virus to become less pathogenic over time as it mutates will eventually turn it into a nuisance bug and not much else down the line. We still have to get to that point, unfortunately.

When you look at the per capita numbers, you can clearly see the areas of the country that have done well and not so well. Not so well: NY Metro and Northeast (NY/NJ/CT/MA/RI), Deep South (LA/MS/AL), Dakotas (ND/SD), AZ Done well: Geographically isolated (AK/HI), Northern New England (NH/ME/VT), Pacific Northwest (WA/OR), VA/NC/UT. (Note: Utah is a somewhat special case with an average age of almost 4 years younger than any other state, I suspect that is a factor in their lower mortality rate)

Also, while there is lower mortality for those <65 who are healthy, it still has a higher mortality rate than the flu for anyone over 25. Not to mention plenty of younger healthy people either end up hospitalized or have medium/long term effects.

I had brought up the potential under counting in Ohio a little while ago. It is likely other states will be reviewing data going forward (or are doing it now, this is the likely reason for such bad numbers out Alabama lately)

Some of these "deaths following the vaccine" are due to the fact you have millions of people 65+ getting the vaccine in a relatively short period of time. Normal mortality among the elderly is going to result in deaths shortly after getting the vaccine which have nothing to do with the vaccine itself. Then you have the cases of anaphylaxis which do occur (they occur with flu vaccines as well). From what I have read the rate of these reactions is not significantly higher that with the flu vaccine, it is just its much more noticeable due to large numbers involved and the fact every case is being made a big deal. You don't hear stories on the news about deaths following flu vaccination, even though it does happen. The one "grey area" is adverse effects of the 2nd dose, which as mentioned about can be significant. That said in general the risks associated with getting Covid are much more than the risks of getting the vaccine.

If its good data peak winds/gusts should appear in the TCR from the NHC. Might just have to wait for that if they are now permanently withholding the data for some reason, even though they released the Laura data after 30 days.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.06.21251159v1 According to this preprint, the B.1.1.7 variant accounts for ~2.5% of all U.S .cases as of the end of January. You have to remember that exponential growth takes time to really become noticeable. The original virus was likely in places like NYC in early February. We know it was in Italy and Iran prior to the first reported Cases in Wuhan. It took several weeks to a couple of months with no mitigation in place for cases to really take off. Per the paper, Florida seems to have a higher percentage of variant cases than other states (~5%) with it expected to become the dominant variant there by early March. If variant spread does indeed trigger another cases spike, it should occur there first based on the paper.

There will always been a group that will deny anything, just like there are people that deny AIDS, the moon landing, etc. There is no question when everything started in January, a lot of regular people though this would go the way of SARS, MERS or at worst the swine flu. They assumed with modern medicine and better access to information you would never see another epidemic in this country with this level mortality in a short time frame. In reality we just got lucky with the 3 cases I mentioned. SARS didn't spread unless someone was already fairly sick, MERS has a low transmission rate and the swine flu had a much lower mortality rate than Covid.

When you compare the numbers on state dashboards compared for actual death certificate data reported by the CDC via the National Center for Health Statistics, some states have noticeably higher numbers reported by the CDC. Ohio (15,900 CDC vs 11,500 state) Kentucky (5,020 CDC vs 3,920 state) Missouri (8,318 vs 7,688) Nebraska (2,433 vs 1,952) Oklahoma (5,393 vs 3,681) Wisconsin (6,804 vs 5,992) are some notable examples. OH and OK stand out in particular (40% undercount???). CDC now shows 550k all cause excess mortality since last year.

7-day average has begun falling and this decline should accelerate shortly. Cases are continuing to drop sharply. Today was barely above last Sunday (weather may be impacting that a bit, but trend is still clear.)

So far is appears the key ones (UK/SA/Brazil) all seem to share the same key 1 or more mutations. SA and Brazil seems very similar, closer to each other than the UK one. Evidence suggests that these mutations are developing independently or each other. Which would make sense as I don't think there is that much travel between Manaus and SA. Vaccines still appear to be effective enough against them so far. IF we start getting further mutations which decrease the vaccine effectiveness, especially the ability to prevent severe disease, then you have a problem. The latter has NOT happened yet, as far I I know.

3.3" here

0.8". will see if snow growth improves with better echos.

Steady very light snow here, finally getting saturation it seems.

first small flakes here

FYI The website that has been linked regarding the HCQ and Ivermectin has had their Twitter account banned for over a month. They appear to be misrepresenting the conclusions of at least some of the referenced studies. e.g: https://c19study.com/mitja.html There was a 25% reduction in hospitalization and 16% reduction in the median time to symptom resolution for HCQ, without statistical significance due to small samples. (bolded mine) Site also goes to length to hide any affiliations. Notwithstanding, obviously it is important that research on potential treatments continue. Numbers are continuing to go in the right direction. Deaths I expect to start dropping in earnest this week. Should be <2000/day in 3 weeks. Still much too many of course, but will take time to get there.

Current vaccines seem to work well enough against the UK and South Africa ones at least, although some slight drop in efficiency against the South Africa one has been reported. We simply don't have enough good data about the Brazil one yet.

This number should keep dropping with continuing trends. You have to remember that 7 states now have >10% of their population tested positive (ND/SD >12%). Real number of infections is generally estimated to be 4-5x the confirmed numbers, That would result in 40-60% of the population actually exposed in those states. Between that, vaccinations and the parts of the population willing/able to be very careful not to expose themselves, the virus starts to run out of people to infect.

Basically every state is seeing steady drops here as of late last week. Should see significant downturn in deaths within 2 weeks. At this point the only thing IMHO that prevents case numbers from dropping to very low levels by April-May is rapid growth of variant with ability to significantly bypass current immunity/vaccine. This doesn't seem to be an issue with the "UK" one at least. Just saw a Report the Moderna vaccine is effective against the SA variant as well. The main danger with these variants is case number falls could be delayed if people let up on protective measures (masks/large gathering reduction) too quickly before significant immunizations occur due to higher transmission rates. Important to keep watching virus evolution. Right now I am optimistic about a somewhat normal summer, probably minus very large (100+) indoor social gatherings or packed theatres/concert halls.

Continuing to get good nationwide drops in cases, positivity and hospitalizations. Hospital numbers are -20% off peak now. Deaths should follow after about another week. the numbers are just so high it is going to take time to get it down. Assuming a slighter better CFR as we vaccinate more LTC residents I think that number will be down to ~2200-2300/day in mid. Feb based on current case numbers.

The less stringent storage requirements and single dose will help to significantly increase the speed of immunizations. Also a much more viable vaccine for the development world.

Am guessing the drop in cases is a combination a couple of things: 1. Coming off a time period where accelerated transmission was occurring due to holiday gatherings, 2. Partial herd immunity due to virus having infected a significant percentage of those unable/unwilling to avoid exposure risk, while those are able/willing to protect themselves remain harder for the virus to infect. If you relax things too much before sufficient vaccination occurs, especially in winter, spikes in cases will probably occur. I Think once Spring comes infection rates are going to very low, assuming nothing like rapid spread of a variant with high rates of reinfection/vaccine bypass happens.

Long term, the virus likely becomes endemic producing mostly mild symptoms which people won't need to be tested for, like the over 4 endemic circulating coronaviruses. The exact path from here to there is a bit of a question mark, as it depends on both vaccine uptake and evolution of the virus. We just don't have another pandemic coronavirus to definitively compare it to, although it has been suggested this is what actually happened in 1890. In that case there were waves of varying severity over 4-5 years before becoming endemic. Of course there was no vaccine then nor did we have the tools to monitor virus evolution on short time scales.

All metrics currently suggest continued dropping off the peaks earlier this month. Cases, positivity, hospitalizations all falling. Reasonable chance 7-day case average falls below 200k by end of the week. Would think deaths start a steady fall around by the end of the month. Numbers are at such a high level it will take time to get them down though, even with vaccinations coming. The only thing that would throw a wrench in declining numbers IMHO would be increased prevalence in either imported or (potentially) homegrown variants with increased transmission rates. Natural selection will favor such variants as numbers drop overall. Hopefully even if this scenario does come of pass by that time a large percentage of the most at risk have bean vaccinated. This would significantly reduce mortality and hospital strain.