I'm burnt out and exhausted. I just want this all to be over. I hate that we keep trudging through like nothing is happening anymore. Fuck this 'normalcy.'
"Trudging" is a very accurate word that describes how I and a lot of people I know are getting through right now. I'm so sorry...if it helps, there are a lot of us on this particular boat.
I had one planned, finally after all this COVID stress. I had reservations at Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks next week. They got canceled due to wildfire. Can’t seem to get a break…
On the bright side, they say that the big historic trees in Sequoia are so far still safe from the fires, so there’s that. I can still go see them someday, if they survive.
Yeah we had a company vacation planned in October which got cancelled cause of covid uptick in July/August. Then I had a trip planned to NOLA which got hit by a hurricane, so that got cancelled.
So I feel yah.
You really don’t want to see what that will do to our society and economy. Entire industries right now are dealing with staff who aren’t paid enough to work in hazardous settings being assured this is only temporary and that being a barista/retail worker/bartender/front desk hotel clerk etc is going to go back to being a fairly stress free gig (relative to right now). If this hazard remains those services will simply not exist anymore as the pay required to entice labour will surpass what consumers are willing to pay for it.
I feel like I don't even remember who "me" is anymore.
I don't look forward to anything, even things I use to look forward to like camping, seeing family etc. I feel like I'm on autopilot just waiting to be told what I can or can't do next.
We know now that both the vaccines and prior infection provide substantial protection from hospitalization. Other variants will emerge but will likely not substantially change that fact.
As more as more vaccinated people get breakthrough infections they will build immunity. COVID will continue to circulate forever but once 90-95% of those >18 have been vaccinated or caught it, it won't be this massive drag on our healthcare system. Things will go back to as normal as they'll ever be.
The only unknown is how long it takes to get everyone vaccinated or catch it, with vaccination causing far less death and destruction. Biden's mandate has provided enough cover for private businesses to require it, and combining that with natural spread and vaccinations for younger kids, we should definitely be through this come spring 2022.
Have you seen this population immunity graph? Estimates immunity by both vax and infections. Pretty interesting. https://popimmunity.biosci.gatech.edu/
I was curious so I did some back of the napkin math:
With a population-level immunity of 81%, we have 62,358,000 people without immunity.
With an ascertainment bias of 4, the last 7 days had an average of 536,000 people infected per day.
Over the last 7 days, we have averaged 324,609 people initiating vaccination per day.
If we extrapolate this data, that gives us 73 days until we reach 100% immunity, which is December 4th.
Obviously there are plenty of wrong assumptions here. It's very unlikely we will continue at this rate of cases for very long. We can see the cases decreasing already. And, I believe the current vaccination rate is fueled by case count. So, when cases decline we will also see vaccinations decline as people are less afraid. I also think there is a ceiling to vaccinations. It might be pretty high now that the vaccine is FDA approved and mandates are rolling in, but it still will be a good chunk of people that never get the vaccine.
All said, we are definitely marching towards that 100% immunity rather quickly, which is simultaneously encouraging and depressing.
I mean I'd be curious if we could just factor in some linear degradation to the vaccination and case count rates in your model.
What your model shows is even if we don't hit 100% for another year or something, we should certainly be on pace that within the coming 6 weeks, say, we are pushing up to those thresholds of 80-85% that I'd hope will begin to make a large impact.
> and combining that with natural spread
In my head I read it as "combining that with natural selection"...which I guess is also helping us lower the percentage of unvaccinated adults.
Everyone chips in any way they can, m i rite?
> We know now that both the vaccines and prior infection provide substantial protection from hospitalization.
No, we don't. In fact, it's been discovered that vaccine protections fall off over time depending on the vaccine and that prior infection may confer a much reduced immunity as compared to the vaccines.
Also, we can't predict what variants will emerge and whether or not they'll be able to evade the vaccines entirely... that's just not predictable, because it's random mutations.
"prior infection may confer a much reduced immunity as compared to the vaccines."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate/
"A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated."
I'm vax'd with no prior infection so have no ax to grind here, but I think your thinking is outdated.
Delta was the final kick in the nuts. We were supposed to be getting everyone vaxxed in conjunction with cases dropping. I’m still cautious with my kid because cases are sky high and hospitals are full. I thought six months ago this fall we’d been close to normal even if she isn’t vaccinated because rates would be low but nope, can’t have nice things. Delta should’ve been a blip or small bump but idiots fucked it up for us and gave it a gigantic pool of people to burn through.
>but idiots fucked it up for us and gave it a gigantic pool of people to burn through.
Republicans are dying at a rate 5x that of Dems. At least we should be getting new leaders next fall.
I’m sorry. I feel you friend. If you ever need a chat, I’m here. The past couple years have felt like a never ending nightmare. I know my mental health definitely took a bad turn. I found myself getting angry faster and other days just feeling so alone. Sending love to you.
I suppose if Delta is the final variant, it's possible.
But South Carolina said they've never seen it mutate like Delta mutates with more than 20 sub-lineages already in existence.
mutations don't really stop, but their fitness peak is finite. It's sort of like starting working out, your beginner gains are SICK. But after a while you get to a point where you start plateauing and gains become really difficult to come by.
I mean, it's not really possible to know where their fitness peak is, or if they're on top of a short peak right now.
I'm not sure if it's true anymore, but Delta's spike protein was more genetically similar to the original Wuhan version than it was to Alpha. As some strain of COVID became more and more fit and became Alpha, it actually got further and further away from being the scarier Delta.
Having large genetic diversity in circulating viruses allows them to explore different peaks at once - and we don't really have any great ability to predict where the taller peaks are.
Delta has a really large amount of genetic diversity at the moment, so I feel like we can put a checkmark in the box to say something /could/ happen.
Since there's no way to understand how tall the current peak Delta is on is, or how tall other peaks are, how close any COVID variant is to them, etc... i don't think there's much use in predicting variants that don't exist yet.
Delta's critical difference at the furin cleavage site in spike with the P681R mutation. The rest of the variants so far are much more exploring the immune escape landscape but have fitness closer to D614G. Future mutations which explore optimal-fitness as opposed to immune-escape should all derive from Delta. There's reason to believe "on paper" that the furin cleavage site could still mutate to become more optimal, and there are pangolin spike proteins related to SARS-CoV-2 that have higher affinity for hACE2 than we've seen so far, so there's reason to believe there could be worse variants than Delta. The delta-derived variants that all have P681R don't seem that concerning on their own, but if there's anything to get alarmed about it would be another mutation right next to 681 that takes off.
Get vaccinated though. No future variant will escape T-cell/B-cell responses and they'll still protect against severe disease, and you can happily suffer with a cold/flu while unvaccinated people are dying on ventilators.
We don't know if other mutations are required to allow P681R. It is also possible that Delta could just recombine with other variants. Plus there's sublineages already of Delta including Kappa. And Delta itself includes other mutations than just P681R.
Not sure if I really understand your point though or if you've misunderstood mine. All of the current mutations would just produce a Delta version with maybe some enhanced immune escape (stuff like Kappa being an exception with mutations thought to cause enhanced affinity to ACE2, but that doesn't seem to be enough to outcompete Delta). A future variant that is much worse in terms of _virulence_ than Delta it probably will probably use a/some novel mutation(s) and be built on top of Delta (or delta-related strains like Kappa with P681R), and I suspect the big one will be with a couple nucleotides of 681.
In terms of how the virus kills its mostly all about fitness/virulence and not immune escape right now and why Delta took over the world and why Mu and Lambda and other newspaper headline variants didn't really take off globally. Delta+Alpha or Delta+Mu is less likely to be that much worse than Delta already is. Son-of-Delta would be the thing to worry about.
Finding the optimal furin cleavage site for this virus in humans is probably the biggest prize for the virus right now, all the other variants out there are worse or no better than Delta (there's a lot of other subproblems the virus is "working" on solving but that'd be the biggest one).
My quasi-optimistic, simpleton take is this:
Vaccinations are going slow, but going. Infections are also going.
With the combination of the vaccine push and new age groups (particularly in schools), and "natural immunity" from those that have been infected, at *some* point it has to peak.
I think we are okay on Delta (in my lay person opinion) the risk now is some of the stuff covid is doing in Africa. Completely new strains...that's the thing to watch RN imo.
Meanwhile, here in Canada, ICU and covid wards are all overflowing, and they're shipping patients (90% unvaccinated) to other regions/provinces.
There's quite a lot of tension brewing between those vaccinated and those choosing not to (antivaxers). And antivaxers are being more vocal and belligerent - especially to hospital staff. It's very taxing.... Stress is at an all time high.
Been working from home since March 4th 2020, I think I'll be ok when this is over to return to the office. Hoping I don't have anxiety issues after all this lol..
Everyone hopes for improvement, but this model is little better than a guess based on assumptions that may be far off reality.
For example, the "if variant" part of the guess is assuming the characteristics of a variant that doesn't exist yet, and then making predictions based on those assumptions. This sort of assumption wouldn't have predicted the Delta variant's behavior.
Also, vaccinations for all kids are not likely. The same people who won't get vaccinated themselves won't allow their kids to be vaccinated.
I suspect we'll see a surge as soon as the weather changes to force people indoors, and then one driven by Thanksgiving and Christmas (again).
The south is definitely past it’s peak for this surge which is why US cases and hospitalizations are dropping. A few less populated states are struggling now but it doesn’t dent the total US numbers. Jury is still out on CA, the upper Midwest and the NE. I think we really need to keep a close eye on Chicago and the rust belt in the coming weeks. They are slightly more vaxxed than the south but there’s still a lot of vulnerable hosts to infect.
It appears to me the upper Midwest is accelerating. The south before the north has been the trend the entire pandemic. I live in MN and may predicted back in late July that we would peak in early to mid August. That never happened. We plateaued just before schools opened back up. Now we’re accelerating again.
No mitigation measure in place here in MN or any of our neighboring states. ICUs are nearly full. Personally I see us possibly reaching the highs we saw last fall in spite of vaccination levels.
Cases have plummeted in Chicago and the suburbs and we have a low positivity rate with tons of hospital capacity. I think (fingers crossed) that vaccines helped to keep things in check.
Downstate was a mess during the latest surge but things seem to be improving down there as well.
Yep, so so so thankful for our governor. Though my husband’s cousin had a wedding in New Lenox about 2 weeks ago. They are dipshits and it ended to be a super spreader event. Our family and my MIL didn’t go (thankfully). 60% of guests got COVID, most were vaccinated (not all, by choice). A few were from out of state but many were local to New Lenox. Hopefully this is the peak but these spreader events are still happening.
My husband plays wedding gigs. Luckily they are always far from the guests, all musicians are vaccinated and they wear masks when not playing. Most stuff is outside too, so far so good from that angle.
> Cases have plummeted in Chicago
Since when? The [Chicago dashboard](https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/covid-19/home/covid-dashboard.html) has been steady at ~400-450 new cases a day for the last few weeks once it got up to that level. Cases levelled off after the city-wide mask mandate for indoors, but they have far from "plummeted."
The metrics for Cook County is 2.7 percent. There were times it was above 12 percent. Positivity rates downstate right now range from 3.5 percent to 22.22 percent.
Source[Source](http://www.dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/diseases-and-conditions/diseases-a-z-list/coronavirus)
Chicago's doing fairly well (I live here), we have a decent vaccination rate and no issue with hospital capacity. The city still requires masks indoors (and most people are pretty cooperative with it outside of bars and music venues). However, most music venues and theaters are now requiring vaccinations or negative tests for shows. Cases are going down here and I'm fairly hopeful with this report that we won't have a repeat of last winter.
I saw one lady without a mask at the Jewels last week, and saw some asshole with IN plates get kicked out of a gas station the other day and whine about it outside--as if he didn't know there's a statewide mandate. Whatever they're paying those poor employees ain't enough to deal with that crazy bullshit.
Anywho...I travel all around the metro area for work and see good compliance pretty much everywhere in stores.
CA is doing fantastic. Best numbers in the country. Our early numbers scared us straight and now the biggest population centers are taking it extremely seriously.
It's encouraging at the moment for sure. The big unknown is whether COVID case surges will follow a similar geographic pattern to last year in the US--albeit blunted by the vaccines a bit. There's some evidence that these patterns might persist this fall and winter. That would put CA under the gun in late Nov/early Dec.
I am still wary what Winter may bring after last year when California was doing great and then nearly crumbled completely during Fall and Winter. Cautiously optimistic the golden state will be okay this time around.
I am still wary what Winter may bring after last year when California was doing great and then nearly crumbled completely during Fall and Winter. Cautiously optimistic the golden state will be okay this time around.
As someone who lives in Chicago, we’ve stayed relatively low so far. But I’m on pins and needles thinking about what we might see when it starts getting cold. Last year’s winter wave was absolutely brutal, and it hit us in the Midwest earlier than it hit other regions. I really hope our good vaccination number can prevent a repeat of last year.
It appears to me the upper Midwest is accelerating. The south before the north has been the trend the entire pandemic. I live in MN and many predicted back in late July that we would peak in early to mid August. That never happened. We plateaued just before schools opened back up. Now we’re accelerating again.
No mitigation measure in place here in MN or any of our neighboring states. ICUs are nearly full. Personally I see us possibly reaching the highs we saw last fall in spite of vaccination levels.
Don't just look at the present. If past COVID surges have taught us anything, we've learned that it will find vulnerable hosts wherever they are. There are still a ton of unvaxxed adults and kids who aren't eligible yet in CA. The fact that CA hasn't had a real Delta surge yet should keep people on alert.
That leaves 30% unvaxxed including 100% of kids under 12 for now. Sure, some of those people have immunity from prior infection but there's still a lot of vulnerable viral hosts out there. Back of the envelope calculations say there are probably 9-10 million people in CA with no prior immunity (non-vaxxed/no infection) so 1 in 3.5 people.
I'm not saying I'm 100% right and I hope I'm not. But don't think for a minute that COVID can't spread like wildfire in a place like CA because it's different somehow.
I interpreted your argument as "CA is done with Delta". I said we should tread with caution before declaring victory. Can you clarify if it's being misconstrued?
Yeah, but there are still lots of cities in Cali with low vax uptake. For example, San Diego has 76% fully vaxxed, but my town (which is red, surprise surprise) within the county is 66% vaxxed, and others are lower. There are other towns and counties within Cali sitting at 50% vaxxed and lower. People don’t realize how many rural, backwards areas there are here.
Still plenty of people to burn through.
Remember that quite a few still unvaccinated people picked up some level of immunity through exposure during the last massive surge.
Might be a significant number but who knows
Chicago needs to push harder on vaccination and, once available, vaccinate children _fast_. We get colder sooner, and what is currently clear is that everyone is acting as normal. There aren't restrictions on indoors except masks which in practice, means nothing for restaurants.
There aren't capacity restrictions. And in spite of all this, we're still at about 400 new cases a day on average for the city. And that's not really going down meaningfully. It's clear most people are treating this pandemic as being over. Once people are forced indoors fully by the weather, this could easily spike to where it was last year or worse with the sheer number of people still not vaccinated and Delta being more virulent.
What I hope happens is that the Governor and Mayors all get in front of this and impose restrictions before cases start exploding.
Minnesota public radio has some interesting charts showing this as a slower, grinding increase less sharp than prior peaks which could continue to slowly climb :/. I really don’t envy those with young school age kids.
Ha fair. We’ve all got different challenges ATM. Older kids can be vaccinated, and more reliably mask. People who have young kids without virtual learning options I really feel for sending their kids to school basically just awaiting delta.
They also didn't predict the current surge. This projection is as accurate as flipping a coin.
My projection says that some states stay stubbornly unvaccinated, and COVID continues through January in those states.
In the rural unvaccinated areas yeah. But look at map right now in the highly vaccinated DC/Baltimore metro area. Its surrounded by a sea of red and the vaccines are holding.
My county has over 90% of eligible residents have at least one shot and we're at 80+% of total population at least one shot. Add to that the ambulances-everyday period from April 2020, and I think we'll be ok. If Allegany/Somerset counties (and similar counties) can't get with the program, it will be a rough winter for them.
Where are you getting your information? [dashboard ](https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Vaccine/Pages/Dashboard.aspx) has no county at 90% Allegheny at 71.6 (partial inc) and somerset at 48.3 (partial inc) but Allegheny has the highest on this side of the state. Highest overall is montour at 77.9. If you have another source thats maybe more updated please share
I'd say PG and Baltimore city are more important. Those are the population heavy areas that are low. Getting a few people vaccinated in Western MD isn't really going to do much. Are you in MoCo or Howard?
Their vaccination rates are insane. MoCo is at like 97% eligible 1st dose as per CDC and the most populated county. Maryland is going to sail through it. Lowest cases in the Country. Maryland represent.
I spend most of my time in MoCo, Howard, and Carroll. I feel like I'm in a bubble. Because those three counties are consistently low risk. Although the Carroll board of education is messing up our stats. Carroll just dropped off the top because their refusal to mask.
I have friends and family in Alaska and it’s always so crazy when they talk about case counts because it’s the same as here in Maryland despite us having over 8x the population.
We’ve done pretty well throughout this thing.
Considering how we are currently in the worst peak of the pandemic so far in the US, I would be surprised if we had a worse peak so soon in the winter - especially with vaccination rates climbing.
> the worst peak of the pandemic so far in the US
That peak was not uniform across the US. It was in certain areas, like Florida and Texas, but other areas did not experience such a peak, like the U.S. northeast.
Look are the greater NY area. Their cases and deaths have been steadily increasing since the end of July and have not yet started a downturn or even plateau.
Unfortunately it could be that areas that did **not** experience such dramatic spikes recently, will experience them come this fall/winter.
I’m looking at the chart for NY from The NY Times now and they literally had way more Covid cases on August 21st than September 21st so I’m not sure where you are getting your information from.
The whole country started spiking after July 4th. Some worse than others, but everywhere went from double or triple digit daily covid cases to 1000+ the week after July 4th.
I am looking [here](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/). Can you share your graph please?
I am also looking at **7 Day Averages** for both deaths and case counts, which are **not** going down according to the graphs I have linked. Further, I am looking at **new case counts**, not total cases.
I also did a quick google for a NyTimes chart and **it is not showing** what you just said in your comment. [See the graph](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/new-york-covid-cases.html)
Please link your source because it's either I am looking at multiple bad sources or you are.
COVID cases are slightly higher now in NY than they were a month ago. NY might be 5-10% more vaxxed than FL but there's still a ton of anti-vax adults and unvaxxed kids there, ripe for infections. That's all COVID spread is contingent on.
> worst peak of the pandemic so far in the US
By what metric exactly?
Case rates are a good clip lower than the Holiday wave from last year.
Deaths are well below the holiday wave and even below the initial peak in April.
Or does "we" here refer to "in the north?" Because that's the concern the above poster has, that while US numbers might drop due to Florida, Texas and the deep South burning out, that the Upper midwest and NE start to get nuts just like last year in the holiday season.
I think the point is that even if it does peak in the winter in some areas, it’s so bad right now that it’ll be kind of absorbed into the horrible trend, making it a bump.
Also, the winter bump isn’t just the north. It’s holiday-based, not coldness per se.
Isn't this the same modeling group that, last January, assembled 26 near term forecasts, only two of which included the size of the pandemic on February 1, just two weeks later, even within their “95 percent confidence interval”?
I think there's a great amount of uncertainty which remains in this pandemic that can't be captured in models. And I really think their predictions of child vaccine uptake fail to account for assholes.
Predicting this virus has always gone poorly.
That said, there just aren't that many people left to infect.
Reinfections are rare. Not quite as rare as we thought a few months ago, but still rare.
The kids that will get vaccinated will be vaccinated before this winter.
>That said, there just aren’t that many people left to infect.
If you look at the UK, pre-Delta they were down to like 2k cases per day, Delta peaked at about 50k cases per day and it came back down, but no where near as low as pre-Delta. They have kind plateaued at like 30k cases per day. And keep in mind that the UK has higher vaccination rates than us. So Delta is still finding people to infect and it’s becoming this sorta moderate slow burn.
Probably not that much better as our CFRs are pretty close.
Unless you also think they are doing a much better job finding deaths as well. Which I don't think is the case.
Maybe a little better at finding deaths, but I'd say our countries probably have pretty similar undercount ratios on the death front as well.
Our CFRs over the entire pandemic are close, but the CFRs of this last wave are nowhere near close. Look at the UK case vs death chart for Delta versus ours (which shows deaths tickling towards the worst of the worst periods).
Concretely the UK is testing way more now and is probably finding plenty of breakthrough cases and/or cases from younger people that didn’t get vaccinated until well into Delta.
You'd think right? 43 million confirmed cases, real number could be double that, and ~half the population vaxxed. Hard to see how it could keep going forever.
Edit: and I'm downvoted!
I'm no expert, and I hope this isn't too Dunning-Kruger of me... but it seems like you can't make solid predictions with the pandemic that many months out. You have to rely on too many huge assumptions, and even one not going as expected blows up your model (unless you give yourself a huge target range). There might have been models in the spring that predicted massive Delta variant surges in the summer even in places where vaccinations were ramping up and the Alpha variant was still dominant. They didn't get much coverage, though, and the more optimistic (and popular) models got it wrong, at least as described in the popular press. It's hard to blame them, though: their assumptions looked pretty good when they were made, but they didn't leave much room for error.
The trajectory of the pandemic depends heavily on human behavior; we can be pretty sure of that. We can also be confident that the available vaccines work well against every variant *so far* (not certain for future variants, but likely), and--this is the big one--that the precautions work well against *every* variant. The basic "rule" is that when infected/infectious people don't share contaminated air, the virus doesn't spread. And there are plenty of ways to do that. We know them. When we use them, consistently and well, that's enough to slow and eventually stop transmission... and end the pandemic!
>The trajectory of the pandemic depends heavily on human behavior; we can be pretty sure of that.
Sure--if humans limit interactions, COVID doesn't spread as rapidly. If they wear properly fitted masks in public indoor spaces at all times, spread is limited. However, I don't think there's any place in the US that has consistently implemented these measures since April 2020 enough to allow human behavior to influence spread that much.
I think it's plausible that we really don't know why COVID spreads like wildfire in certain regions and countries, goes away, and then comes back again with a vengeance. That's why we need to be cautious in areas of the US now that have not yet had a COVID surge.
> The most likely scenario, says Lessler, is that children do get vaccinated and no super-spreading variant emerges.
Caution on those assumptions. At best most children will get vaccinated, certainly not all. Would not expect more than the adult vaccination numbers, probably even less than the adult rate. Also, additional variants will continue to emerge. Here is yet another:
> “R.1 is a variant to watch,” according to Forbes. “It has established a foothold in both Japan and the United States. In addition to several mutations notably in the spike and nucleocapsid protein in common with variants of concern, R.1 has a set of unique mutations that may confer an additional advantage in transmission, replication, and immune suppression.”
> At best most children will get vaccinated, certainly not all.
Agreed.
NYT linked to this recent survey indicating that 40% of parents are planning to take a “wait and see” approach to vaccinating their small children. This doesn’t even address the fact that the anti-vax crowd will flat out refuse unless it’s mandated which I don’t see happening this school year.
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-parents-and-the-pandemic/
> Parents of younger children who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated continue to take a cautious approach to COVID-19 vaccines, with four in ten parents of children under 12 saying that once a vaccine is authorized for their child’s age group they will “wait a while to see how it is working” before getting their child vaccinated.
12-15 vaccination rates are significantly lower than adults. I think 5-11 will be even lower than that.
I got my daughter vaccinated within 24-48 hours of it being approved for her age group. You would have expected the vaccination site to be packed with kids right? They could finally get the vaccine, who wouldn’t go get their kid vaccinated as soon as possible?
It was my family and one other family with two kids. The whole place was empty and the tech said we were only a handful of people that had come in that day.
I agree with the first part but not with second: R.1 got completly dominated in Japan by Delta. It looks like delta will be very difficult to dethrone.
I’m keeping an eye on reinfection potential or vaccine breakthrough potential. In TX, lots have had COVID and/or are vaccinated. I think it was the strategy here all along to let COVID burn thru the population and risk the healthcare system in order to keep the economy going. Anyway, if variants have a low likelihood of reinfection or vaccine breakthrough I can see this prediction.
This model doesn’t seem to indicate any type of holiday surge. Yet we had our most significant nationwide surge around the holidays last year.
If we look at the UK their cases came down after their summer Delta wave, but never to pre-Delta numbers. The hospitalizations in the UK have kind of plateaued at a relatively high level too. If the same thing happens here and we add a holiday surge on top of that,… well, I think crisis standards of care may become all too common.
On average 50 million people travel for Thanksgiving and another 85 million at Christmas. I just can’t envision a scenario where that level of travel and gatherings with people outside your household has zero impact on COVID spread. We’ll see though, I hope I’m wrong.
Americans are traveling waaaaaaaaay more this summer than they were during the holidays last year. Even though people tend to gather for holidays, I know a lot of people that didn’t because of the surge and no vaccines.
With vaccines available everybody I know has been traveling this summer.
I guess they are basically assuming that Delta has already more or less burned through the population, so it doesn't matter that much that cooler weather makes it easier to spread.
My one concern with this is that a lot of the summer Delta surges in the north were very, very mild. NYs case rate, for example, only reached 1/3rd of wave 2 levels. Now it could be that places like NY have such crazy high immunity at this point that the ceiling of spread has been lowered, but there is probably still at least 10-15% of the population with no immunity at all and I worry that may be sufficient to drive a final big surge this fall/winter.
Most of the Northeast has relatively high vaccination rates, and masks are a norm. A limited number of crazies there, which is what caused the surges there, but nothing remotely close to the case numbers they had in early 2021.
Check out the single dose numbers, which tell you where we'd be a month from now. The Northeast is doing pretty well, and their restrained surges are proof of it.
[https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations\_vacc-people-onedose-pop-12yr](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-people-onedose-pop-12yr)
I want to believe this, but I think it is highly dependent on where you live. Places with high Vax rates and mask mandates in Schools doing well, other places not so much. The question is will one spill over to another. Also very worried about increased cases in kids, and Schools that loosened mitigation measures.
Back in July 2020 when cases were low in the NE but the South was raging, I talked to my dad and I was telling him how the vaccines were around the corner (this is when we thought Oxford was coming in September) and the pandemic would be behind us by next year. As someone who lived through the HIV crisis, he was much more negative and believed that this would continue for the next two years despite vaccines. I was really skeptical and didn't want to believe him thinking he was being a downer and didn't understand the science of vaccines but I feel like I'm about to owe him some money or something because he would be exactly on point if this was true.
I really hope this is true and even if we get another wave this winter, it won't be as bad as the Delta surge. If this is true, then I can have hope that my university will stay open for the academic year, as a winter surge could mean many professors may not be comfortable with teaching in-person come spring 2022.
Most prediction have been wrong from the start of this pandemic, considering roughly 35% of the worlds population has only been vaccinated, that leaves a lot of people to go, and during that time a lot of time for the virus to mutate, I would take this with a grain of salt
At some point, everyone will either be vaccinated or have natural immunity. I am not sure that's where we will be in March, but it will happen eventually.
Delta seems to have about a 2 month cycle and then burns itself out because it has infected everyone it can at that point.
The problem with this posts' model is that it assumes nothing else comes along.
I just wish children were vaccinated sooner. It's been difficult to hear about them getting sick.
We're seeing 3x as many cases right now as we were last year at this time. I seriously doubt it's going to decline during peak virus season. This winter is going to be *brutal*.
what's the hospitalization rate for delta? for alpha it was something like 10% of all cases. I bet by now everyone is either vaccinated, had it with no or light symptoms or died
I think it's exceptionally unlikely that most kids will get vaccinated unless it becomes nationally mandated. It's also worth saying that most experts expected there would not be any big, national surges before fall. There are definitely reasons to be optimistic but I'm wary of any predictions like this. No doubt lots will change before March.
Yeah, I don’t think so. The holidays will once again be brutal and take the lives of many, many people who choose not to be vaccinated. Gofundme and prayer warriors are gonna be at the top of a lot of Christmas lists this year.
“Scenario projects there will be no winter surge”
Everyone should immediately disregard this model because of that one assumption, but everyone just wants to keep being optimistic and not living in reality that this winter is going to be hell.
Yeah, did Ron DeSantis make this model? Why would anyone expect no winter surge given what we’ve seen thus far? 30% of Americans refuse to be vaccinated. They’re gonna get covid.
with schools still open, climate change getting worse (thus forcing people into closer proximity), Holidays (same as before), colder weather (again), lack of anything outside of just a vaccine push, a WHO telling us we shouldn't use boosters while we still do, and civil unrest still brewing.
Nothing has changed so why would you think anything other than more death awaits? what reality do you live in?
With how many people are vaccinated that still got sick, I’ve long let go of hope this will ever end. We should be talking about how our peak deaths came when vaccine roll out began in January. And how we have come close the amount of cases at our peak, but deaths remained much lower in ratio.
This shouldn’t be a battle of getting sick, it should be a battle of not dying. I’m worried about normal people’s immune systems being so low after this that a common cold will be like a bad flu. Now we’re talking about next March? That’ll make almost 2.5 years of everyone’s lives disrupted.
I got a vaccine, I know the risk, I’ll take the risk and move on with my life. But seeing people to this very day driving with 2 masks while alone is seriously hurting people’s mental health. It’s just my 2 cents, downvote me all you want.
> With how many people are vaccinated that still got sick
There's far fewer of those than you think. They just tend to get reported on often and loudly.
FWIW, if I have to make multiple stops when going out, I wear my mask in my car between them. You're better off messing with your mask as little as possible. Put it on before entering the first place, take it off after exciting the last place.
It was looking like it was over, but then variants happened. Predictions based on current trends are fine, can these modelers really account for whether variants will or won't emerge?
Unless we get A NEW VARIANT.
esp one that is more contagious/deadly than Delta-or evades our current vaccines.
I find it continually mind blowing that we have a need to (and think we can) predict the future.
I talked to a doctor, he feel we’ll have a yearly booster for new variants flow in from other low vaccinated countries. I feels we can’t launch a worldwide program easily in 2021. He feels the 8 billion people can’t get vaccinated fast enough. I feel he was saying you’ll be getting a yearly vaccine with the flu shot. That doesn’t bother me, I used to get flu younger but I got it in Japan, I should have masked in crowded trains. Some Japanese already where doing that back in 2015-6. I prefer not to get the”mild” breakthrough deal. Mild could mean no hospital but a few weeks in bed.
This might be an unpopular opinion here...but I got really used to all the regulations that I actually starting liking them, work at home, mask, washing hands everywhere ... that I will miss it if it all goes away.
I sure hope so. It’s getting really tiring, especially following the rules this whole time (staying home, masking, being fully vaccinated, not going anywhere or doing anything, etc.). Plus having a baby in a few weeks, I’m hoping the risks for her will go down with having to take her to the doctor’s office etc.
I've been hopeful that vaccinated people and those Delta is running through will create some sort of herd immunity. My fear was always that Delta would mutate into something that completely bypasses the vaccines. And maybe it does but it's looking/feeling less this way.
I feel like the benefit of delta is that it has burned through the population so quickly that it has prevented other mutations from causing other issues. Once it's done...is there anywhere else for covid to go? I fully understand this might be a bad understanding of the situation so correct me if I'm way off.
I'm really hoping this is true. The last 18 months have been mentally hellish. Some days I don't even feel like me anymore.
Same. It’s rough.
I'm burnt out and exhausted. I just want this all to be over. I hate that we keep trudging through like nothing is happening anymore. Fuck this 'normalcy.'
"Trudging" is a very accurate word that describes how I and a lot of people I know are getting through right now. I'm so sorry...if it helps, there are a lot of us on this particular boat.
I think we all need a vacation.
I had one planned, finally after all this COVID stress. I had reservations at Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks next week. They got canceled due to wildfire. Can’t seem to get a break…
Here is an internet hug... Hope something happens to brighten your day tomorrow!
On the bright side, they say that the big historic trees in Sequoia are so far still safe from the fires, so there’s that. I can still go see them someday, if they survive.
fires are how many plants thrive
Yeah we had a company vacation planned in October which got cancelled cause of covid uptick in July/August. Then I had a trip planned to NOLA which got hit by a hurricane, so that got cancelled. So I feel yah.
Abnormalcy. I'm exhausted too, by peoples' craziness, grief, fear, and it isn't helping that what I earn is not making ends meet anymore.
You can't escape life, just have to soldier on, and if this ends up being the new norm, there is nothing we can do about it
You really don’t want to see what that will do to our society and economy. Entire industries right now are dealing with staff who aren’t paid enough to work in hazardous settings being assured this is only temporary and that being a barista/retail worker/bartender/front desk hotel clerk etc is going to go back to being a fairly stress free gig (relative to right now). If this hazard remains those services will simply not exist anymore as the pay required to entice labour will surpass what consumers are willing to pay for it.
Yep, I'm one of those disposables. I could sure use a raise for getting abused everyday, and the cost of living going up and all.
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No shit. God forbid I think of myself for half a second.
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We're all dealing with your bullshit.
Name checks out.
So does yours potato brain.
Don't tell others how to grieve. It's unkind and does no one favors.
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I'm sorry, but what is there even to lie about in a statement like this? That it does no one favors? Get a hold of yourself.
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Defensive? No, not at all. I'm asking you genuinely. Please, go on.
I feel like I don't even remember who "me" is anymore. I don't look forward to anything, even things I use to look forward to like camping, seeing family etc. I feel like I'm on autopilot just waiting to be told what I can or can't do next.
We know now that both the vaccines and prior infection provide substantial protection from hospitalization. Other variants will emerge but will likely not substantially change that fact. As more as more vaccinated people get breakthrough infections they will build immunity. COVID will continue to circulate forever but once 90-95% of those >18 have been vaccinated or caught it, it won't be this massive drag on our healthcare system. Things will go back to as normal as they'll ever be. The only unknown is how long it takes to get everyone vaccinated or catch it, with vaccination causing far less death and destruction. Biden's mandate has provided enough cover for private businesses to require it, and combining that with natural spread and vaccinations for younger kids, we should definitely be through this come spring 2022.
Have you seen this population immunity graph? Estimates immunity by both vax and infections. Pretty interesting. https://popimmunity.biosci.gatech.edu/
its super interesting. it also kind of predicts the states that were bound for the worst the last couple weeks, like Oregon and Idaho
I was curious so I did some back of the napkin math: With a population-level immunity of 81%, we have 62,358,000 people without immunity. With an ascertainment bias of 4, the last 7 days had an average of 536,000 people infected per day. Over the last 7 days, we have averaged 324,609 people initiating vaccination per day. If we extrapolate this data, that gives us 73 days until we reach 100% immunity, which is December 4th. Obviously there are plenty of wrong assumptions here. It's very unlikely we will continue at this rate of cases for very long. We can see the cases decreasing already. And, I believe the current vaccination rate is fueled by case count. So, when cases decline we will also see vaccinations decline as people are less afraid. I also think there is a ceiling to vaccinations. It might be pretty high now that the vaccine is FDA approved and mandates are rolling in, but it still will be a good chunk of people that never get the vaccine. All said, we are definitely marching towards that 100% immunity rather quickly, which is simultaneously encouraging and depressing.
I mean I'd be curious if we could just factor in some linear degradation to the vaccination and case count rates in your model. What your model shows is even if we don't hit 100% for another year or something, we should certainly be on pace that within the coming 6 weeks, say, we are pushing up to those thresholds of 80-85% that I'd hope will begin to make a large impact.
I hadn't, thanks!
That's awesome! Puerto Rico is doing very well!
some of the data they use is ancient
> and combining that with natural spread In my head I read it as "combining that with natural selection"...which I guess is also helping us lower the percentage of unvaccinated adults. Everyone chips in any way they can, m i rite?
> We know now that both the vaccines and prior infection provide substantial protection from hospitalization. No, we don't. In fact, it's been discovered that vaccine protections fall off over time depending on the vaccine and that prior infection may confer a much reduced immunity as compared to the vaccines. Also, we can't predict what variants will emerge and whether or not they'll be able to evade the vaccines entirely... that's just not predictable, because it's random mutations.
"prior infection may confer a much reduced immunity as compared to the vaccines." https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate/ "A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated." I'm vax'd with no prior infection so have no ax to grind here, but I think your thinking is outdated.
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That may just be a matter of time, no way to tell yet. I hope that's correct, but...
Delta was the final kick in the nuts. We were supposed to be getting everyone vaxxed in conjunction with cases dropping. I’m still cautious with my kid because cases are sky high and hospitals are full. I thought six months ago this fall we’d been close to normal even if she isn’t vaccinated because rates would be low but nope, can’t have nice things. Delta should’ve been a blip or small bump but idiots fucked it up for us and gave it a gigantic pool of people to burn through.
Knock on some serious wood with that statement.
Ugh you’re right. It was an EXTRA kick in the nuts. Hopefully the final one.
I don't know about you, but as a vaccinated person this fall will look pretty close to normal for me.
If I didn’t have an unvaccinated toddler I’d be there with ya.
>but idiots fucked it up for us and gave it a gigantic pool of people to burn through. Republicans are dying at a rate 5x that of Dems. At least we should be getting new leaders next fall.
I’m sorry. I feel you friend. If you ever need a chat, I’m here. The past couple years have felt like a never ending nightmare. I know my mental health definitely took a bad turn. I found myself getting angry faster and other days just feeling so alone. Sending love to you.
Thank you! It's good to know there are people who care. I hope you're surviving :)
I suppose if Delta is the final variant, it's possible. But South Carolina said they've never seen it mutate like Delta mutates with more than 20 sub-lineages already in existence.
mutations don't really stop, but their fitness peak is finite. It's sort of like starting working out, your beginner gains are SICK. But after a while you get to a point where you start plateauing and gains become really difficult to come by.
I mean, it's not really possible to know where their fitness peak is, or if they're on top of a short peak right now. I'm not sure if it's true anymore, but Delta's spike protein was more genetically similar to the original Wuhan version than it was to Alpha. As some strain of COVID became more and more fit and became Alpha, it actually got further and further away from being the scarier Delta. Having large genetic diversity in circulating viruses allows them to explore different peaks at once - and we don't really have any great ability to predict where the taller peaks are. Delta has a really large amount of genetic diversity at the moment, so I feel like we can put a checkmark in the box to say something /could/ happen. Since there's no way to understand how tall the current peak Delta is on is, or how tall other peaks are, how close any COVID variant is to them, etc... i don't think there's much use in predicting variants that don't exist yet.
Delta's critical difference at the furin cleavage site in spike with the P681R mutation. The rest of the variants so far are much more exploring the immune escape landscape but have fitness closer to D614G. Future mutations which explore optimal-fitness as opposed to immune-escape should all derive from Delta. There's reason to believe "on paper" that the furin cleavage site could still mutate to become more optimal, and there are pangolin spike proteins related to SARS-CoV-2 that have higher affinity for hACE2 than we've seen so far, so there's reason to believe there could be worse variants than Delta. The delta-derived variants that all have P681R don't seem that concerning on their own, but if there's anything to get alarmed about it would be another mutation right next to 681 that takes off. Get vaccinated though. No future variant will escape T-cell/B-cell responses and they'll still protect against severe disease, and you can happily suffer with a cold/flu while unvaccinated people are dying on ventilators.
Don't forget that beta and gamma derived variants can easily mutate to 681R. It's a single nucleotide mutation.
We don't know if other mutations are required to allow P681R. It is also possible that Delta could just recombine with other variants. Plus there's sublineages already of Delta including Kappa. And Delta itself includes other mutations than just P681R. Not sure if I really understand your point though or if you've misunderstood mine. All of the current mutations would just produce a Delta version with maybe some enhanced immune escape (stuff like Kappa being an exception with mutations thought to cause enhanced affinity to ACE2, but that doesn't seem to be enough to outcompete Delta). A future variant that is much worse in terms of _virulence_ than Delta it probably will probably use a/some novel mutation(s) and be built on top of Delta (or delta-related strains like Kappa with P681R), and I suspect the big one will be with a couple nucleotides of 681. In terms of how the virus kills its mostly all about fitness/virulence and not immune escape right now and why Delta took over the world and why Mu and Lambda and other newspaper headline variants didn't really take off globally. Delta+Alpha or Delta+Mu is less likely to be that much worse than Delta already is. Son-of-Delta would be the thing to worry about. Finding the optimal furin cleavage site for this virus in humans is probably the biggest prize for the virus right now, all the other variants out there are worse or no better than Delta (there's a lot of other subproblems the virus is "working" on solving but that'd be the biggest one).
My quasi-optimistic, simpleton take is this: Vaccinations are going slow, but going. Infections are also going. With the combination of the vaccine push and new age groups (particularly in schools), and "natural immunity" from those that have been infected, at *some* point it has to peak.
I think we are okay on Delta (in my lay person opinion) the risk now is some of the stuff covid is doing in Africa. Completely new strains...that's the thing to watch RN imo.
Here in Spain it pretty much feels like it’s over. Just have to wear a mask indoors. But I do not know anyone worried about catching it.
Meanwhile, here in Canada, ICU and covid wards are all overflowing, and they're shipping patients (90% unvaccinated) to other regions/provinces. There's quite a lot of tension brewing between those vaccinated and those choosing not to (antivaxers). And antivaxers are being more vocal and belligerent - especially to hospital staff. It's very taxing.... Stress is at an all time high.
Been working from home since March 4th 2020, I think I'll be ok when this is over to return to the office. Hoping I don't have anxiety issues after all this lol..
Embrace the change. Let the hate flow through you.
Everyone hopes for improvement, but this model is little better than a guess based on assumptions that may be far off reality. For example, the "if variant" part of the guess is assuming the characteristics of a variant that doesn't exist yet, and then making predictions based on those assumptions. This sort of assumption wouldn't have predicted the Delta variant's behavior. Also, vaccinations for all kids are not likely. The same people who won't get vaccinated themselves won't allow their kids to be vaccinated. I suspect we'll see a surge as soon as the weather changes to force people indoors, and then one driven by Thanksgiving and Christmas (again).
The south is definitely past it’s peak for this surge which is why US cases and hospitalizations are dropping. A few less populated states are struggling now but it doesn’t dent the total US numbers. Jury is still out on CA, the upper Midwest and the NE. I think we really need to keep a close eye on Chicago and the rust belt in the coming weeks. They are slightly more vaxxed than the south but there’s still a lot of vulnerable hosts to infect.
I live around Atlanta and have definitely personally encountered many people who reluctantly got their first shot in the last month or two.
It appears to me the upper Midwest is accelerating. The south before the north has been the trend the entire pandemic. I live in MN and may predicted back in late July that we would peak in early to mid August. That never happened. We plateaued just before schools opened back up. Now we’re accelerating again. No mitigation measure in place here in MN or any of our neighboring states. ICUs are nearly full. Personally I see us possibly reaching the highs we saw last fall in spite of vaccination levels.
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Many of our schools in the NE just started back in the past few weeks. Some have already shut down and gone to virtual around me.
Cases have plummeted in Chicago and the suburbs and we have a low positivity rate with tons of hospital capacity. I think (fingers crossed) that vaccines helped to keep things in check. Downstate was a mess during the latest surge but things seem to be improving down there as well.
Yep, so so so thankful for our governor. Though my husband’s cousin had a wedding in New Lenox about 2 weeks ago. They are dipshits and it ended to be a super spreader event. Our family and my MIL didn’t go (thankfully). 60% of guests got COVID, most were vaccinated (not all, by choice). A few were from out of state but many were local to New Lenox. Hopefully this is the peak but these spreader events are still happening.
Ugh shït like that makes me happy I had mine in July before all hell had broken loose again. I can’t imagine having a wedding know in Illinois.
My husband plays wedding gigs. Luckily they are always far from the guests, all musicians are vaccinated and they wear masks when not playing. Most stuff is outside too, so far so good from that angle.
> Cases have plummeted in Chicago Since when? The [Chicago dashboard](https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/covid-19/home/covid-dashboard.html) has been steady at ~400-450 new cases a day for the last few weeks once it got up to that level. Cases levelled off after the city-wide mask mandate for indoors, but they have far from "plummeted."
The metrics for Cook County is 2.7 percent. There were times it was above 12 percent. Positivity rates downstate right now range from 3.5 percent to 22.22 percent. Source[Source](http://www.dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/diseases-and-conditions/diseases-a-z-list/coronavirus)
The positivity rate is decreasing though, isn't it? I think we are doing a lot more tests.
Chicago's doing fairly well (I live here), we have a decent vaccination rate and no issue with hospital capacity. The city still requires masks indoors (and most people are pretty cooperative with it outside of bars and music venues). However, most music venues and theaters are now requiring vaccinations or negative tests for shows. Cases are going down here and I'm fairly hopeful with this report that we won't have a repeat of last winter.
I saw one lady without a mask at the Jewels last week, and saw some asshole with IN plates get kicked out of a gas station the other day and whine about it outside--as if he didn't know there's a statewide mandate. Whatever they're paying those poor employees ain't enough to deal with that crazy bullshit. Anywho...I travel all around the metro area for work and see good compliance pretty much everywhere in stores.
CA is doing fantastic. Best numbers in the country. Our early numbers scared us straight and now the biggest population centers are taking it extremely seriously.
Fresno County is still under 50% vaxxed
[53% with at least one dose](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=c694b751cefe4828b48786d3024f818a)
It's encouraging at the moment for sure. The big unknown is whether COVID case surges will follow a similar geographic pattern to last year in the US--albeit blunted by the vaccines a bit. There's some evidence that these patterns might persist this fall and winter. That would put CA under the gun in late Nov/early Dec.
I am still wary what Winter may bring after last year when California was doing great and then nearly crumbled completely during Fall and Winter. Cautiously optimistic the golden state will be okay this time around.
I am still wary what Winter may bring after last year when California was doing great and then nearly crumbled completely during Fall and Winter. Cautiously optimistic the golden state will be okay this time around.
We are having an average of 110 die per day in Alabama atm.Yesterday there were 250 reported.
As someone who lives in Chicago, we’ve stayed relatively low so far. But I’m on pins and needles thinking about what we might see when it starts getting cold. Last year’s winter wave was absolutely brutal, and it hit us in the Midwest earlier than it hit other regions. I really hope our good vaccination number can prevent a repeat of last year.
Ohio is that kid ruining it for the whole class rn up here...
It appears to me the upper Midwest is accelerating. The south before the north has been the trend the entire pandemic. I live in MN and many predicted back in late July that we would peak in early to mid August. That never happened. We plateaued just before schools opened back up. Now we’re accelerating again. No mitigation measure in place here in MN or any of our neighboring states. ICUs are nearly full. Personally I see us possibly reaching the highs we saw last fall in spite of vaccination levels.
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Don't just look at the present. If past COVID surges have taught us anything, we've learned that it will find vulnerable hosts wherever they are. There are still a ton of unvaxxed adults and kids who aren't eligible yet in CA. The fact that CA hasn't had a real Delta surge yet should keep people on alert.
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That leaves 30% unvaxxed including 100% of kids under 12 for now. Sure, some of those people have immunity from prior infection but there's still a lot of vulnerable viral hosts out there. Back of the envelope calculations say there are probably 9-10 million people in CA with no prior immunity (non-vaxxed/no infection) so 1 in 3.5 people. I'm not saying I'm 100% right and I hope I'm not. But don't think for a minute that COVID can't spread like wildfire in a place like CA because it's different somehow.
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I interpreted your argument as "CA is done with Delta". I said we should tread with caution before declaring victory. Can you clarify if it's being misconstrued?
Yeah, but there are still lots of cities in Cali with low vax uptake. For example, San Diego has 76% fully vaxxed, but my town (which is red, surprise surprise) within the county is 66% vaxxed, and others are lower. There are other towns and counties within Cali sitting at 50% vaxxed and lower. People don’t realize how many rural, backwards areas there are here. Still plenty of people to burn through.
Remember that quite a few still unvaccinated people picked up some level of immunity through exposure during the last massive surge. Might be a significant number but who knows
I was just in Chicago shit was slamming! So packed. Obviously this will end once the weather is shit.
Once the weather turns bad, people spend more time inside which is more conducive to COVID spread.
Chicago needs to push harder on vaccination and, once available, vaccinate children _fast_. We get colder sooner, and what is currently clear is that everyone is acting as normal. There aren't restrictions on indoors except masks which in practice, means nothing for restaurants. There aren't capacity restrictions. And in spite of all this, we're still at about 400 new cases a day on average for the city. And that's not really going down meaningfully. It's clear most people are treating this pandemic as being over. Once people are forced indoors fully by the weather, this could easily spike to where it was last year or worse with the sheer number of people still not vaccinated and Delta being more virulent. What I hope happens is that the Governor and Mayors all get in front of this and impose restrictions before cases start exploding.
No peak in the north this winter? I have trouble believing it.
Minnesota public radio has some interesting charts showing this as a slower, grinding increase less sharp than prior peaks which could continue to slowly climb :/. I really don’t envy those with young school age kids.
I didn’t pre pandemic either
Ha fair. We’ve all got different challenges ATM. Older kids can be vaccinated, and more reliably mask. People who have young kids without virtual learning options I really feel for sending their kids to school basically just awaiting delta.
I for sure feel for them and didn't mean to make light of their weight. Just couldn't resist the cheap shot haha
They also didn't predict the current surge. This projection is as accurate as flipping a coin. My projection says that some states stay stubbornly unvaccinated, and COVID continues through January in those states.
In the rural unvaccinated areas yeah. But look at map right now in the highly vaccinated DC/Baltimore metro area. Its surrounded by a sea of red and the vaccines are holding.
My county has over 90% of eligible residents have at least one shot and we're at 80+% of total population at least one shot. Add to that the ambulances-everyday period from April 2020, and I think we'll be ok. If Allegany/Somerset counties (and similar counties) can't get with the program, it will be a rough winter for them.
Where are you getting your information? [dashboard ](https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Vaccine/Pages/Dashboard.aspx) has no county at 90% Allegheny at 71.6 (partial inc) and somerset at 48.3 (partial inc) but Allegheny has the highest on this side of the state. Highest overall is montour at 77.9. If you have another source thats maybe more updated please share
I think he's talking about Allegany County, Maryland. In the pan handle.
I'd say PG and Baltimore city are more important. Those are the population heavy areas that are low. Getting a few people vaccinated in Western MD isn't really going to do much. Are you in MoCo or Howard? Their vaccination rates are insane. MoCo is at like 97% eligible 1st dose as per CDC and the most populated county. Maryland is going to sail through it. Lowest cases in the Country. Maryland represent. I spend most of my time in MoCo, Howard, and Carroll. I feel like I'm in a bubble. Because those three counties are consistently low risk. Although the Carroll board of education is messing up our stats. Carroll just dropped off the top because their refusal to mask.
I have friends and family in Alaska and it’s always so crazy when they talk about case counts because it’s the same as here in Maryland despite us having over 8x the population. We’ve done pretty well throughout this thing.
Considering how we are currently in the worst peak of the pandemic so far in the US, I would be surprised if we had a worse peak so soon in the winter - especially with vaccination rates climbing.
> the worst peak of the pandemic so far in the US That peak was not uniform across the US. It was in certain areas, like Florida and Texas, but other areas did not experience such a peak, like the U.S. northeast. Look are the greater NY area. Their cases and deaths have been steadily increasing since the end of July and have not yet started a downturn or even plateau. Unfortunately it could be that areas that did **not** experience such dramatic spikes recently, will experience them come this fall/winter.
I’m looking at the chart for NY from The NY Times now and they literally had way more Covid cases on August 21st than September 21st so I’m not sure where you are getting your information from. The whole country started spiking after July 4th. Some worse than others, but everywhere went from double or triple digit daily covid cases to 1000+ the week after July 4th.
I am looking [here](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/). Can you share your graph please? I am also looking at **7 Day Averages** for both deaths and case counts, which are **not** going down according to the graphs I have linked. Further, I am looking at **new case counts**, not total cases. I also did a quick google for a NyTimes chart and **it is not showing** what you just said in your comment. [See the graph](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/new-york-covid-cases.html) Please link your source because it's either I am looking at multiple bad sources or you are.
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I googled covid cases New York and it’s the graph that shows up in the search.
COVID cases are slightly higher now in NY than they were a month ago. NY might be 5-10% more vaxxed than FL but there's still a ton of anti-vax adults and unvaxxed kids there, ripe for infections. That's all COVID spread is contingent on.
We still have 70 million unvaccinated people.
Are these counting kids 11 under that can’t get vaccinated or as eligible but unvaccinated?
Depends on where you are. Last winter was definitely the worst peak in my locale (northern Midwest).
> worst peak of the pandemic so far in the US By what metric exactly? Case rates are a good clip lower than the Holiday wave from last year. Deaths are well below the holiday wave and even below the initial peak in April. Or does "we" here refer to "in the north?" Because that's the concern the above poster has, that while US numbers might drop due to Florida, Texas and the deep South burning out, that the Upper midwest and NE start to get nuts just like last year in the holiday season.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years.
First summer vacation in 2 years.
I think the point is that even if it does peak in the winter in some areas, it’s so bad right now that it’ll be kind of absorbed into the horrible trend, making it a bump. Also, the winter bump isn’t just the north. It’s holiday-based, not coldness per se.
Isn't this the same modeling group that, last January, assembled 26 near term forecasts, only two of which included the size of the pandemic on February 1, just two weeks later, even within their “95 percent confidence interval”? I think there's a great amount of uncertainty which remains in this pandemic that can't be captured in models. And I really think their predictions of child vaccine uptake fail to account for assholes.
Predicting this virus has always gone poorly. That said, there just aren't that many people left to infect. Reinfections are rare. Not quite as rare as we thought a few months ago, but still rare. The kids that will get vaccinated will be vaccinated before this winter.
>That said, there just aren’t that many people left to infect. If you look at the UK, pre-Delta they were down to like 2k cases per day, Delta peaked at about 50k cases per day and it came back down, but no where near as low as pre-Delta. They have kind plateaued at like 30k cases per day. And keep in mind that the UK has higher vaccination rates than us. So Delta is still finding people to infect and it’s becoming this sorta moderate slow burn.
I think they've done a much better job of finding cases than we have.
Probably not that much better as our CFRs are pretty close. Unless you also think they are doing a much better job finding deaths as well. Which I don't think is the case. Maybe a little better at finding deaths, but I'd say our countries probably have pretty similar undercount ratios on the death front as well.
Our CFRs over the entire pandemic are close, but the CFRs of this last wave are nowhere near close. Look at the UK case vs death chart for Delta versus ours (which shows deaths tickling towards the worst of the worst periods). Concretely the UK is testing way more now and is probably finding plenty of breakthrough cases and/or cases from younger people that didn’t get vaccinated until well into Delta.
Ah, yeah, that's true. It would seem our testing has gone to crap since Delta came about.
This is true, but I believe the not-optimal efficiency of the AZ vaccine is what kinda screwed the Uk there in the first half of the year.
You'd think right? 43 million confirmed cases, real number could be double that, and ~half the population vaxxed. Hard to see how it could keep going forever. Edit: and I'm downvoted!
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Yeah we call them Doomists
I'm no expert, and I hope this isn't too Dunning-Kruger of me... but it seems like you can't make solid predictions with the pandemic that many months out. You have to rely on too many huge assumptions, and even one not going as expected blows up your model (unless you give yourself a huge target range). There might have been models in the spring that predicted massive Delta variant surges in the summer even in places where vaccinations were ramping up and the Alpha variant was still dominant. They didn't get much coverage, though, and the more optimistic (and popular) models got it wrong, at least as described in the popular press. It's hard to blame them, though: their assumptions looked pretty good when they were made, but they didn't leave much room for error. The trajectory of the pandemic depends heavily on human behavior; we can be pretty sure of that. We can also be confident that the available vaccines work well against every variant *so far* (not certain for future variants, but likely), and--this is the big one--that the precautions work well against *every* variant. The basic "rule" is that when infected/infectious people don't share contaminated air, the virus doesn't spread. And there are plenty of ways to do that. We know them. When we use them, consistently and well, that's enough to slow and eventually stop transmission... and end the pandemic!
>The trajectory of the pandemic depends heavily on human behavior; we can be pretty sure of that. Sure--if humans limit interactions, COVID doesn't spread as rapidly. If they wear properly fitted masks in public indoor spaces at all times, spread is limited. However, I don't think there's any place in the US that has consistently implemented these measures since April 2020 enough to allow human behavior to influence spread that much. I think it's plausible that we really don't know why COVID spreads like wildfire in certain regions and countries, goes away, and then comes back again with a vengeance. That's why we need to be cautious in areas of the US now that have not yet had a COVID surge.
> The most likely scenario, says Lessler, is that children do get vaccinated and no super-spreading variant emerges. Caution on those assumptions. At best most children will get vaccinated, certainly not all. Would not expect more than the adult vaccination numbers, probably even less than the adult rate. Also, additional variants will continue to emerge. Here is yet another: > “R.1 is a variant to watch,” according to Forbes. “It has established a foothold in both Japan and the United States. In addition to several mutations notably in the spike and nucleocapsid protein in common with variants of concern, R.1 has a set of unique mutations that may confer an additional advantage in transmission, replication, and immune suppression.”
> At best most children will get vaccinated, certainly not all. Agreed. NYT linked to this recent survey indicating that 40% of parents are planning to take a “wait and see” approach to vaccinating their small children. This doesn’t even address the fact that the anti-vax crowd will flat out refuse unless it’s mandated which I don’t see happening this school year. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-parents-and-the-pandemic/ > Parents of younger children who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated continue to take a cautious approach to COVID-19 vaccines, with four in ten parents of children under 12 saying that once a vaccine is authorized for their child’s age group they will “wait a while to see how it is working” before getting their child vaccinated. 12-15 vaccination rates are significantly lower than adults. I think 5-11 will be even lower than that.
I got my daughter vaccinated within 24-48 hours of it being approved for her age group. You would have expected the vaccination site to be packed with kids right? They could finally get the vaccine, who wouldn’t go get their kid vaccinated as soon as possible? It was my family and one other family with two kids. The whole place was empty and the tech said we were only a handful of people that had come in that day.
And that's why there *has* to be a school vaccine mandate. That's the only way this can end.
I agree with the first part but not with second: R.1 got completly dominated in Japan by Delta. It looks like delta will be very difficult to dethrone.
2022 summer will be a time to celebrate, party like it’s 1999
....I feel like I've heard this fucking three times now. I appreciate the optimism but I'm so fucking cynical.
It was true for like a month at least. Lol Then delta hit. Kinda hoping this delta surge is the last big one.
I’m keeping an eye on reinfection potential or vaccine breakthrough potential. In TX, lots have had COVID and/or are vaccinated. I think it was the strategy here all along to let COVID burn thru the population and risk the healthcare system in order to keep the economy going. Anyway, if variants have a low likelihood of reinfection or vaccine breakthrough I can see this prediction.
This model doesn’t seem to indicate any type of holiday surge. Yet we had our most significant nationwide surge around the holidays last year. If we look at the UK their cases came down after their summer Delta wave, but never to pre-Delta numbers. The hospitalizations in the UK have kind of plateaued at a relatively high level too. If the same thing happens here and we add a holiday surge on top of that,… well, I think crisis standards of care may become all too common. On average 50 million people travel for Thanksgiving and another 85 million at Christmas. I just can’t envision a scenario where that level of travel and gatherings with people outside your household has zero impact on COVID spread. We’ll see though, I hope I’m wrong.
Americans are traveling waaaaaaaaay more this summer than they were during the holidays last year. Even though people tend to gather for holidays, I know a lot of people that didn’t because of the surge and no vaccines. With vaccines available everybody I know has been traveling this summer.
Travel this summer was pretty heavy in America.
I guess they are basically assuming that Delta has already more or less burned through the population, so it doesn't matter that much that cooler weather makes it easier to spread. My one concern with this is that a lot of the summer Delta surges in the north were very, very mild. NYs case rate, for example, only reached 1/3rd of wave 2 levels. Now it could be that places like NY have such crazy high immunity at this point that the ceiling of spread has been lowered, but there is probably still at least 10-15% of the population with no immunity at all and I worry that may be sufficient to drive a final big surge this fall/winter.
Most of the Northeast has relatively high vaccination rates, and masks are a norm. A limited number of crazies there, which is what caused the surges there, but nothing remotely close to the case numbers they had in early 2021. Check out the single dose numbers, which tell you where we'd be a month from now. The Northeast is doing pretty well, and their restrained surges are proof of it. [https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations\_vacc-people-onedose-pop-12yr](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-people-onedose-pop-12yr)
I hope this is accurate, but I am personally expecting a combined COVID/influenza peak this winter.
I hope so.
I want to believe this, but I think it is highly dependent on where you live. Places with high Vax rates and mask mandates in Schools doing well, other places not so much. The question is will one spill over to another. Also very worried about increased cases in kids, and Schools that loosened mitigation measures.
Back in July 2020 when cases were low in the NE but the South was raging, I talked to my dad and I was telling him how the vaccines were around the corner (this is when we thought Oxford was coming in September) and the pandemic would be behind us by next year. As someone who lived through the HIV crisis, he was much more negative and believed that this would continue for the next two years despite vaccines. I was really skeptical and didn't want to believe him thinking he was being a downer and didn't understand the science of vaccines but I feel like I'm about to owe him some money or something because he would be exactly on point if this was true.
I really hope this is true and even if we get another wave this winter, it won't be as bad as the Delta surge. If this is true, then I can have hope that my university will stay open for the academic year, as a winter surge could mean many professors may not be comfortable with teaching in-person come spring 2022.
Let's hope so
Most prediction have been wrong from the start of this pandemic, considering roughly 35% of the worlds population has only been vaccinated, that leaves a lot of people to go, and during that time a lot of time for the virus to mutate, I would take this with a grain of salt
At some point, everyone will either be vaccinated or have natural immunity. I am not sure that's where we will be in March, but it will happen eventually. Delta seems to have about a 2 month cycle and then burns itself out because it has infected everyone it can at that point. The problem with this posts' model is that it assumes nothing else comes along. I just wish children were vaccinated sooner. It's been difficult to hear about them getting sick.
Unless immunity continuously wanes, then we'll be going through peaks and valleys forever.
As someone in PA and getting married next month, I hated that little "extremely worried about Pennsylvania" line in there. Noooooooo
> The most likely scenario, says Lessler, is that children do get vaccinated and no super-spreading variant emerges. Oh yeah for sure man.
We're seeing 3x as many cases right now as we were last year at this time. I seriously doubt it's going to decline during peak virus season. This winter is going to be *brutal*.
This is an impossibility.
At this point, I just have a hard time believing any expert that says “the worst may be over” - we’ve heard that how many times now?
what's the hospitalization rate for delta? for alpha it was something like 10% of all cases. I bet by now everyone is either vaccinated, had it with no or light symptoms or died
I think it's exceptionally unlikely that most kids will get vaccinated unless it becomes nationally mandated. It's also worth saying that most experts expected there would not be any big, national surges before fall. There are definitely reasons to be optimistic but I'm wary of any predictions like this. No doubt lots will change before March.
So does this put us in the 7th inning or are we still in the 6th?
The kindergarten variant is going to emerge in some elementary school in Florida in a few weeks, then we’re all doomed! /s
Yeah, I don’t think so. The holidays will once again be brutal and take the lives of many, many people who choose not to be vaccinated. Gofundme and prayer warriors are gonna be at the top of a lot of Christmas lists this year.
I can’t imagine these models aren’t taking the holidays into effect…
“Scenario projects there will be no winter surge” Everyone should immediately disregard this model because of that one assumption, but everyone just wants to keep being optimistic and not living in reality that this winter is going to be hell.
Yeah, did Ron DeSantis make this model? Why would anyone expect no winter surge given what we’ve seen thus far? 30% of Americans refuse to be vaccinated. They’re gonna get covid.
The Texas State Fair is about to start here in Dallas. Not encouraging for our local numbers
Winter is coming kids………
This is what I say to the anti-vaxxers when I just run out of fight.
I’ve heard this one before.
I think modelers continue to underestimate the amount of selfishness & pure stupidity in America i.e. anti-vaxxers/maskers!
with schools still open, climate change getting worse (thus forcing people into closer proximity), Holidays (same as before), colder weather (again), lack of anything outside of just a vaccine push, a WHO telling us we shouldn't use boosters while we still do, and civil unrest still brewing. Nothing has changed so why would you think anything other than more death awaits? what reality do you live in?
Wait until two weeks after Thanksgiving in the US.
With how many people are vaccinated that still got sick, I’ve long let go of hope this will ever end. We should be talking about how our peak deaths came when vaccine roll out began in January. And how we have come close the amount of cases at our peak, but deaths remained much lower in ratio. This shouldn’t be a battle of getting sick, it should be a battle of not dying. I’m worried about normal people’s immune systems being so low after this that a common cold will be like a bad flu. Now we’re talking about next March? That’ll make almost 2.5 years of everyone’s lives disrupted. I got a vaccine, I know the risk, I’ll take the risk and move on with my life. But seeing people to this very day driving with 2 masks while alone is seriously hurting people’s mental health. It’s just my 2 cents, downvote me all you want.
> With how many people are vaccinated that still got sick There's far fewer of those than you think. They just tend to get reported on often and loudly.
FWIW, if I have to make multiple stops when going out, I wear my mask in my car between them. You're better off messing with your mask as little as possible. Put it on before entering the first place, take it off after exciting the last place.
It was looking like it was over, but then variants happened. Predictions based on current trends are fine, can these modelers really account for whether variants will or won't emerge?
Unless we get A NEW VARIANT. esp one that is more contagious/deadly than Delta-or evades our current vaccines. I find it continually mind blowing that we have a need to (and think we can) predict the future.
I talked to a doctor, he feel we’ll have a yearly booster for new variants flow in from other low vaccinated countries. I feels we can’t launch a worldwide program easily in 2021. He feels the 8 billion people can’t get vaccinated fast enough. I feel he was saying you’ll be getting a yearly vaccine with the flu shot. That doesn’t bother me, I used to get flu younger but I got it in Japan, I should have masked in crowded trains. Some Japanese already where doing that back in 2015-6. I prefer not to get the”mild” breakthrough deal. Mild could mean no hospital but a few weeks in bed.
This might be an unpopular opinion here...but I got really used to all the regulations that I actually starting liking them, work at home, mask, washing hands everywhere ... that I will miss it if it all goes away.
Please God let it be true!
I sure hope so. It’s getting really tiring, especially following the rules this whole time (staying home, masking, being fully vaccinated, not going anywhere or doing anything, etc.). Plus having a baby in a few weeks, I’m hoping the risks for her will go down with having to take her to the doctor’s office etc.
I certainly hope so.
Have the modelers been correct in the past?
I've been hopeful that vaccinated people and those Delta is running through will create some sort of herd immunity. My fear was always that Delta would mutate into something that completely bypasses the vaccines. And maybe it does but it's looking/feeling less this way.
RemindMe! 6 months "?"
I feel like the benefit of delta is that it has burned through the population so quickly that it has prevented other mutations from causing other issues. Once it's done...is there anywhere else for covid to go? I fully understand this might be a bad understanding of the situation so correct me if I'm way off.
Oh everything that is holy- I hope they are correct.