The Pandemic Blog

As I pointed out last week, daily reported new cases are now a huge multiple of what they were a year ago at this time. Last week, they were eight times higher. And that’s an underestimate, since there are so many tests being conducted at home now, vs. very few a year ago. If the person never has to go to the hospital or the doctor, a mild or asymptomatic case will probably never be reported. Granted the new variants are less deadly, but as we saw in January, the lower mortality rate can be overwhelmed by the number of cases. If we have this many new cases in the summer months, when people are less likely to be in indoor gatherings, we’ll probably be lulled into a false sense of well-being. This was the case last July 4, when Biden all but declared victory over the virus (and the CDC dropped mask requirements, which was criticized by many at the time and proved to be a mistake. Of course, they’re dropped now, but nobody has the heart to call for them to be put back in place, even tho...

It’s great to have monthly figures for Covid cases and deaths, going back to March 2020 (I only show the deaths below, because they’re a lot more reliable than case numbers). It really helps to have a longer perspective than just the last few weeks and months. There’s a great example of that today. Look at deaths from January to May of this year. Pretty impressive, no? A steady decline. Surely, we’ve beaten Covid! However, now look at June and July of 2021; those numbers are even lower. And if you recall, at that time we were very confident that Covid was behind us, just like we are now. But meanwhile, the new – and extremely deadly – delta variant was marshalling its forces for an all-out assault, which became clear as deaths tripled in August, and went up from there. Nowadays, it’s hard to keep track of all the new variants (I no longer try), but each is more transmissible than the last (that’s how it gets to be number one). Of course, none of these is anywhere near as deadly a...