The nightmare scenario

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Daily new cases were over 22,000 last week. This was the first time they’ve been at that level since the end of May. Of course, cases would be continuing on a downward track now, were it not for the fact that so many people are reluctant to get vaccinated. According to the CDC Director, “Preliminary data from several states over the past several months suggests that 99.5 percent of covid-19-related deaths occurred among unvaccinated people.” It’s hard to imagine how a rational risk calculation would lead anyone to conclude they shouldn’t be vaccinated. Yet here we are!

Of course, with so many unvaccinated people in the US (and especially in other countries), it will take much longer before Covid is managed successfully, so that it’s about as deadly as the seasonal flu. That’s bad, but it’s not the real nightmare scenario that I’ve seen described in a couple sources recently.

Harmful variants are much more likely to arise in places where there are a lot of infected people. This just gives the virus a much larger field to play in, as it looks for ways to reproduce itself more successfully. The Delta variant arose in India, and Kevin Perry yesterday sent me an article about the Lamda variant (we’re going to run out of Greek letters soon! We may have to start numbering them), which is now causing almost all new infections in Peru.

So far, it seems the current vaccines are effective against the new variants. But here’s the nightmare scenario: A variant could arise that evades all current vaccines. It then can spread uninhibited until…we have widespread lockdowns again. In other words, were this to happen, we would literally be back in March 2020, except this time with even more reluctance to take the measures needed to stop the virus from spreading.

Doesn’t that sound like fun? It seems I might have to dust off my old posts… 

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, June 6.

Month

Deaths reported during month

Avg. deaths per day during period

Deaths as percentage of previous month’s

Month of March 2020

4,058

131

 

Month of April

59,812

1,994

1,474%

Month of May

42,327

1,365

71%

Month of June

23,925

798

57%

Month of July

26,649

860

111%

Month of August

30,970

999

116%

Month of Sept.

22,809

760

75%

Month of Oct.

24,332

785

107%

Month of Nov.

38,293

1,276

157%

Month of Dec.

79,850

2,576

209%

Total 2020

354,215

1,154

 

Month of Jan. 2021

98,604

3,181

119%

Month of Feb.

68,918

2,461

70%

Month of March

37,945

1,224

55%

Month of April

24,323

811

64%

Month of May

19,843

661

82%

Month of June

10,544

351

53%

Total Pandemic so far

622,969

1,251

 

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of last Sunday: 622,969

Average deaths last seven days: 238

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 34,759,692

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 156,109 (= 22,301/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.5%  

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

 

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