Excargodog

Might be the seasonal nature of the virus, might be the 47 million who have had at least one shot, might be the almost 30 million who had COVID and are now - for awhile at least) relatively immune. Might be the restrictions, but truthfully states without restrictions don’t appear to be doing a helluva lot better than those with them. Might be just dumb luck. Whatever the case, the numbers are dropping.

kaputt

This is why the fear campaign is being ramped up now about the “new variants” and potential domestic travel restrictions. Gotta keep the fear machine chugging at full blast so they can avoid people questioning why we’re still doing this BS.

BoilerUP

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...es/burden.html

Only 1 of every estimated 4.6 infections has been reported...with 27.03M cases as of yesterday that’s 124M or 37%-ish of population previously infected.

Some of the vaccinated are previously COVID infected, so the figures have overlap.

Bottom line is infection-conferred immunity as a means of helping suppress infection numbers alongside an burgeoning vaccination campaign has gotten VERY little attention from the media or Fauci.

Let’s hope the trend vector continues as more needles go in arms and Janssen’s (and perhaps Novavax & A-Z) vaccine is approved and force multiplies vaccine supply.

skywatch

I don't think you will see much attention to the fact that we are likely already pretty close to getting herd immunity.. We already sold everybody that the vaccine is the savior, and spent tons and tons of money on it. Why change our tune now and admit anything we have been doing up until now was wrong? Nobody questions it anyway.

John Carr

Not sure/haven’t researched.

But maybe the change to tests that reduce the amount of false positives as well?

Excargodog

Still dropping....

GeeWizDriver

And yet, POTUS says today we have to wear masks. Through NEXT YEAR.

Sigh....

ZapBrannigan

To be fair, cases are still nearly twice as high as they were after the first November surge, and 10 times higher than the Memorial Day surge that prompted a lot of closings of indoor dining and such. A downward trajectory is great, especially if the variants don’t reverse it, but we have a way to go to drive those numbers down to Australia type numbers.

FlyPurdue

There is also still a large percentage of the population who completely avoid any indoor (and even many outdoor) activities. They probably will not get exposed. All the sudden, the percentage of people who have natural or vaccinated immunity and are out in society is much higher then even the 40% referenced above (I too am starting to see that repotted in media outlets). Plus, it seems that the vast majority of ultra high risk population has fortunately gotten vaccinated so they will probably not show up in hospitalization / death statistics.

I agree that the insistent fear mongering over the variants is frustrating, but at the same time - I don’t want to see all this progress for naught if there is another spike in hospitalizations like we saw the past few months. The good news seems that serious infection with even the ‘aggressive’ variants can be minimized with nearly all the approved vaccinations (maybe not Oxford).

In all cases, I’m optimistic that come late spring we will see daily deaths / hospitalizations more similar to a flu season, and then we can stop talking about it.

mysealium

Test 123340