Agreed on most of your points. Although I think it is better to view the data state by state, nationally the decrease in daily new cases has been going on for almost 2 weeks now. In any event, the “lags” you describe are correct.
I suspect having several days with over 4k fatalities a day nationally has an effect, and more or less parallels people hearing of more of their friends and acquaintances getting either very ill or passing away. (I find that in my church the prayers asked for affected individuals very well reflect the general trends and numbers for our several county area.)
I don’t see much of a holidays’ surge so much as trends already baked in, BUT, after Christmas / New Years Day the transmission definitely began to decline in many states, and is reflected in the National trends. (Deaths are still much too high, but, the positive acceleration / second derivative in that curve seems to be over, thank God.)
IDK if anyone has published curves of estimated transmission over time, esp. on a state by state basis, but, such would be quite useful in discussion of the pandemic.
Jan. 19, 2021 CDC estimated(!) 83.1 million people in the US had been infected by COVID-19, 70.4 million with at least some symptoms. This is actually a drop from the previous report, with CDC saying they have a better estimate now. Ok... Still, if those numbers are even remotely correct, I would think SOME herd immunity effect could be discerned.
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Just think how much better off things could have gone if instead of mandates and those idiotic PSA’s on TV, etc., real education (such as about mask etiquette) and a push for plenty of N95’s for vulnerable people had been emphasized.
FWIW, I went into our local “Rural King” earlier today and they had on sale KN95 masks with a “Honeywell” brand name. $.93 each. Big crate of them.
Now... my 1st question is if these are some half-assed Chinese copy having nothing to do with the US company “Honeywell” (who might actually have some QC in place)? Isn’t anyone like Consumer Reports, the FDA, or the CPSC looking at this sort of thing?
Do these actually have the electret charged polyester fibers inside (which DO give very effective entrapment of even aerosolized virus particles)?
There were two slightly different types, and one has 4 roughly 0.25” dia. punch-outs near the straps attachments. Only a thin layer of the outer material covers these — I’ll want to plug those holes. (The whole idea is that I do some of the care for my 90 y/o Mom and she can’t afford for me to pick up COVID-19, or even flu, really! I’ve been using some getting really long in the tooth 3M N95’s, sterilizing them after each use. In use, a surgical mask goes over the N95 as a pre-filter to reduce dust loading up the critical fibers in the N95. So far that is working well, but I know it won’t last forever.) Finding more 3M 95’s seems to be a search for the Holy Grail, at present.
The N95s are so effective at filtering out allergens that only once while I’ve had one on since all this started have I sneezed into one. Maybe twice I felt coughs coming on but was able to lift the mask and cough into my arm. (One grocery shopper glared at my arm cough, but she relented when I pulled out my little bottle of spray alcohol & sanitized my hands. Hahaha.)
You can look at graphs of state level cases over time at the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 dashboard. Unfortunately, I see no way to download the data for analysis. You can mouse over each bar of the graph to see the number, but it is tedious to mouse, copy, mouse, copy, for each graph bar.
Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering.Refresh the page to get the latest data.
I suspect having several days with over 4k fatalities a day nationally has an effect, and more or less parallels people hearing of more of their friends and acquaintances getting either very ill or passing away.
Early in the pandemic, hardly anyone knew anyone who had caught Covid-19, and it wasn't real to them. It's easy to fall for conspiracies and misinformation when it hasn't happened to anyone you know.
Now that the numbers are higher, almost everyone has some experience with someone they know getting sick. With the death rate staying around 1.66%, a lot more people know someone who died of it. Also, the famous people dying from it must have some effect. Larry King just died, and Herman Cain died a few months ago from it. Charlie Pride, too. Dawn Wells who was Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island. David Prowse (Darth Vader). Some younger celebrities in their 30s and 40s have also died from Covid-19, showing that it isn't just deadly for old people. When someone you know dies of a disease, that disease is no longer an abstract, it becomes real. So that can help explain the increase in proper mask use.
Still, if those numbers are even remotely correct, I would think SOME herd immunity effect could be discerned.
Covid-19 was estimated to have an R-nought value of around 2.5. That means that 60% of the population must become immune in order for herd immunity to become a factor. Given the questions about long-term immunity--some studies have shown that it lasts for weeks or months, and immunity from other coronaviruses typically wanes after a few months--it is unlikely that natural infections will lead to herd immunity. Even if immunity is long-lasting, around 200 million people would have to recover from illness to achieve herd immunity. And that would mean 3.3 million deaths at the current death rate. As far as I know, herd immunity from infections has never resulted in the disappearance of a disease. Diseases have only been eradicated with vaccine programs.
Just think how much better off things could have gone if instead of mandates and those idiotic PSA’s on TV, etc., real education (such as about mask etiquette) and a push for plenty of N95’s for vulnerable people had been emphasized.
I don't watch TV, so I don't know about the PSAs. I do know that there have been massive efforts to make and distribute face masks. I've tried to educate people about their importance. Oddly, even though I often had to wear a face mask before I retired from medical research, I never really got used to the feel of one on my face until now. Maybe some people are getting better about wearing masks simply because they have become accustomed to the feel of them.