Is it a Post Covid World?

Was on the CDC website today and there is a message that starting this week, they will only be updating certain databases once a week rather than daily. And they’ve decided to do the updates on Thursday. I’m not sure how much time it takes them to do the updates and put the data out but I guess they’ve decided that time can better be spent elsewhere.

And that does make sense. I know there is a new variant showing up in the tables right now but it hasn’t taken off just yet. But, at some point, you do have to wonder if there is any point in continuing all the data gathering and reporting. Then again, we haven’t called off the emergency yet so I guess it isn’t quite time to put it all away.

Cases continue to fall and we are now at thirteen straight weeks of falling cases. The latest numbers (which will go up slightly as the states with missing data fill in the gaps) showed 254,197 newly reported cases. That is the lowest figure we’ve seen since mid April. As a reminder, the low for the year was 180,194 back in the week that ended on April 3rd.

Cases are not a perfect measure and we’ve seen tests fall way off but that might mean we are doing a better job of counting legitimate cases. But we are seeing the percentage of positive results drop as well so, even with the reduced testing, the drop is cases looks legit.

Over the last week, cases were up in only nine states so the declines are not limited to a few big states.

The ten states with the most cases per million last week were New York, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Delaware, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. Again, still heavily concentrated in the Northeast where cases seem to be flat vs other parts of the country where they are falling.

Last year, the winter really hit around mid December and that is still two months away. Right now, the trends are all in the right direction.

The problem is that there are still some number of people who don’t (or can’t) let this go. While the number has dropped dramatically, there are a handful of mask holdouts who can’t seem to enter a store without their security blanket. I guess all the fear mongering just broke them. I guess if that’s the way you want to live your life, who am I to say differently. It is just that a life lived in fear is really no life.

With the change to the frequency of updates, I don’t know when I’ll do another post like this. Probably wait a bit and see if the once a week causes any unique issues.