Looking good.

You can get expect more stories about reinfection with the SA variant, but I don't think we'll see another surge like in December.

Once cases and deaths fall off a cliff, people will stop caring about Covid regardless of what the media has to say. (The opposite has been true as well despite what some on here think)

GAC06 said:

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No, the UK variant will cause another major surge here even though it's not doing that in the... uh... UK

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Lol I keep seeing the doom and gloom over it. But the numbers aren't backing it up yet. Thank the heavens that there appears to be longer lasting cross immunity to all strands that will help get this over with ASAP

I imagine cases will further decline because everyone is stuck at home mostly with their immediate families and not out contracting the Corona

I compare where numbers are now to where they were at the best part of the pandemic which in my opinion was the summer to late summer. Daily new case averages are still nearly 5X the summer rate and death rates are about 4X the summer rate.

I agree both rates are declining rapidly from their highs and with continued vaccine distribution, this cold weather isolation week, and soon to be warmer weather both will hopefully continue their rapid decline.

But I do think officials will remain hesitant to reduce restrictions considering how locked down we were with those numbers last summer. Btw, that's when I was thinking this event was about over and I had known only a couple of people personally that had even been sick. Fast-forward to now and I have known several people, including healthy ones, that died and many more that have been sick with some of them severely sick. Boy was I wrong about it being over then.

I hope this time we are truly approaching a control of the virus with the vaccines and improved treatments but I won't allow myself to be as dismissive of it as I was back in July and August. But let's all remain hopeful because daily hope is better than momentary despair.

JBenn06 said:

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I imagine cases will further decline because everyone is stuck at home mostly with their immediate families and not out contracting the Corona

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don't' disagree, but there will be a lag before that data shows. the temporary spike will be people who were exposed/infected before the storms and get tested next week when they can venture out.

i think we can see both a temporary spike and then a bigger decline.

AggieBiker said:

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I compare where numbers are now to where they were at the best part of the pandemic which in my opinion was the summer to late summer. Daily new case averages are still nearly 5X the summer rate and death rates are about 4X the summer rate.

I agree both rates are declining rapidly from their highs and with continued vaccine distribution, this cold weather isolation week, and soon to be warmer weather both will hopefully continue their rapid decline.

But I do think officials will remain hesitant to reduce restrictions considering how locked down we were with those numbers last summer. Btw, that's when I was thinking this event was about over and I had known only a couple of people personally that had even been sick. Fast-forward to now and I have known several people, including healthy ones, that died and many more that have been sick with some of them severely sick. Boy was I wrong about it being over then.

I hope this time we are truly approaching a control of the virus with the vaccines and improved treatments but I won't allow myself to be as dismissive of it as I was back in July and August. But let's all remain hopeful because daily hope is better than momentary despair.

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There is definitely a seasonality element to the virus. If you look globally even places that imposed hard lockdowns experienced winter spikes that are now abating. I think we will be in significantly better shape this April than we were last April.

We got up to 2,200 deaths per day last April which was probably undercounted due to limited testing. We are on track to be well below that number this April.

I dont think you can compare where we are now to last Summer due to the seasonal component. Comparing this April to last April will be more of an apples to apples comparison.

Cases are dropping but keep in mind, this was a holiday weekend. Reporting is slow over holidays. Don't be surprised if there is a jump in cases this week due to a backlog of unreported cases.

Cases continuing dropping but the arguments on this thread are:

1. This virus is so deadly that people can wait a week to get tested
2. The new variant will take over any time now
3. President's Day is apparently a huge reporting lag, the likes of which we have never seen

I like what I'm seeing in West Virginia where the vaccine rollout has been really efficient.