Other places that were ahead of us with their Omicron waves have especially varied on the back side of their curves.
It goes up quick everywhere, and drops quickly at first most everywhere. But some places (like the UK) have much more substantial (higher and longer) tails, while other places continue dropping quickly down to very low levels.
I tend to think that our accumulated immunity is high enough, that we will see very low levels at the end of cold and flu season (April), like we saw early last Summer (before Delta) - down another tenfold from current new case numbers.
“ whether we will continue to catch this thing over and over is murky.”
That is a big wild card. If immunity is durable, or fleeting, will make a huge difference, come next Winter.
Doubt it. From what we've seen with previous variants. We can hope that there won't be new variants emerging for a while. But at least we should enjoy a respite for the time being.
The puzzling thing about the UK is their death counts wrt last winter are lower than the US. In terms of % thereof.
If I had to guess, I’d guess temperatures. US winters much colder. People forced inside to the furnace and contained virus.
US deaths far higher compared to last winter’s spike vs UK’s modest bump. Both countries should be seeing both vax and pre infection immunity dying about now. Astrazeneca had weaker numbers, but they are dying less.
Puzzling.