Optimism seems misplaced at the moment.

I saw yesterday that there are now articles suggesting the US has reached the peak (or is close to reaching it) of coronavirus cases, and things will only get better from here on in. After all, we’re now vaccinating a million people a day and we now have a president who actually wants to beat the virus, not surrender to it. It might be slow, but soon things will start getting better.

That is what I would say, were it not for one thing (actually three things): the three new variants of the coronavirus, found originally in the UK, South Africa and Brazil, that spread much faster than the current version. Moreover, Boris Johnson said on Friday that the UK variant may be inherently more deadly, not just a faster spreader. For a horrifying picture of what is happening in the UK now, see this Times article.

As I pointed out in this post recently, the CDC now says the UK variant – which isn’t very widespread in the US now - will become the leading variant by the end of March. And given the breathtaking rate of growth it’s shown in Ireland and the UK, it’s hard to see that cases and deaths will be any less in the US in March than they are today, and maybe more, vaccine or no vaccine. Plus Dr. Fauci said on NPR yesterday that the South African and potentially the Brazilian variants are worse that the UK version, meaning we could be in even worse trouble if either one of them gains a foothold here.

The Washington Post had a great article today. It starts by saying:

Like a speeding car whose brake lines have been cut, the coronavirus variant first spotted in Britain is spreading at an alarming rate and isn’t responding to established ways of slowing the pandemic, according to Danish scientists who have one of the world’s best views into the new, more contagious strain.

Cases involving the variant are increasing 70 percent a week in Denmark, despite a strict lockdown…

Folks, this is quite bad. The article continues

Danish public health officials say that if it weren’t for their extensive monitoring, they would be feeling a false sense of confidence right now. Overall, new daily confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Denmark have been dropping for a month. (the article continues to say that the new strain will probably be the dominant one in Denmark by mid-February, and that daily new cases could quadruple by early April…)

So speaking of false confidence, how are we doing in monitoring the new strain? That requires widespread genetic sequencing, and we’re not doing that. Denmark last week started sequencing all positive cases, while in the US we’re sequencing .3% of them (despite warnings a couple months ago that we really needed to step it up. Again, thanks a lot, Donald!). In other words, the new strain could be spreading every bit as quickly in the US as it is in Denmark, and we wouldn’t know it.

This gives me the same sinking feeling as I had in mid-February last year, when I read an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, one of Trump’s former FDA Commissioners. It asked why there weren’t more identified cases of the coronavirus in the US, given the speed with which it had spread from the start in both Wuhan and Italy. He concluded that we weren’t seeing many cases because we didn’t have much testing capacity. We know how that worked out. Is that what’s happening now, with a lack of sequencing capacity now the culprit?

What’s even more frightening is Denmark has been in lockdown (including schools) for months and new cases have been falling for a month – yet health officials believe there’s no way they’ll avoid a huge increase in cases (i.e. there are no plans to end the lockdown for now, upsurge or not). They used two analogies to explain why they’re so worried:

In a long Facebook post last week, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told people to imagine sitting in the top row of Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium, a soccer arena with a capacity of 38,000 people. A dripping tap is filling it up, one drop the first minute, two drops the second, four drops the third. At that rate, Frederiksen said, the park will be filled in 44 minutes. But it will seem almost empty for the first 42 minutes, she said.

Also, “’This period is going to be a bit like a tsunami, in the way you stand on the beach and then suddenly you can see all the water retracts,’” as cases drop, Krause said. ’Afterward, you will have the tsunami coming in and overwhelming you.’”

So what’s the difference between Denmark and us? There are three main differences:

1.      They’re much better prepared for a huge increase in cases, since they’re already in full lockdown. It’s hard to see how the US would even go into a kinda sorta lockdown like we had in April at this point.

2.      They’re starting from a much lower level than we are. They’ve had about 193,000 cases and fewer than 2,000 deaths so far. Currently, we’d be very lucky if we could get our daily numbers down to those levels. Our deaths would jump to 16,000 a day if cases increased fourfold here, as they likely will in Denmark.

3.      They know what’s about to hit them. We don’t now, but we’ll find out soon enough. The hard way, which seems to be the way we like to manage health risks.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.