You like death, don’t you Owen.
You never speak of anything else.
The chroniclers at Oxen Ford in 1348 carefully noted the deaths each Friday. They were academically oriented clerics (it later became Oxford) and it was they that discovered how bubonic plague became pneumonic.
Weekly death counts of 10, 11, 10, 12, 13 and then suddenly 150, 170, 300 in given villages around. The bacteria lasted long enough to reach the lungs in someone. The coughing began. Exhalations then infected. No rats or fleas req’d any longer.
They didn’t track how many people were in bed. They didn’t track how many got doctor visits. They tracked deaths. Because that’s the purest parameter subject to very little interpretation.
Back then, you sucked it up if you caught the virus. Now you can't return to work or school unless you tested negative.
But we've been consistent in reporting deaths.
Now with the case counts, we have an idea of how bad the spread is in an area. But the scenario that occured in NYC is not going to happen again because we've all acquired immunity against a novel virus.
We'll continue to get hit by variants in the future. Looks like they will continue to get nasty. We are hoping that this is the last major variant but I don't think so. We will see a lull, yes. But it'll be temporary.
A lot of this stuff going around so plenty of opportunities for the virus to mutate so not much we can do to stop that from happening for the time being.