Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Cavebear]

This past 7 day's figures for the US.

* New cases continue to fall (about 10% vs last week)
* Deaths continue to fall (about 9% vs last week)
* Number of active cases have just begun to convert to recovered a bit faster than new cases are coming in
* Daily new cases dropped below 100K for the first time since I've tracked this (mid November, when it was averaging 175K)

Predictions:

* Businesses will foolishly take this as a sign to force people back to in-person work
* Government will foolishly continue the push to reopen schools "safely"
* We'll be right back where we started not less than 60 days hence

I base these predictions on:

* Vaccine distribution not expected to significantly slow spread anytime soon
* New, more infectious strains will likely become dominant during the next 60 days or less
* At least one of these strains (B.1.1.7) infects young children at much higher rates
* At least one of these strains (Brazil 2) appears to be reinfecting already-recovered Covid sufferers at high rates and may require a new vaccine
* I have been contacted this week by 6 recruiters, and I can tell tech companies at least are chomping at the bit to get people back into the office

Date         Deaths  New cases 1 in x total cases 1 in x deaths 1 in x active cases

Wed Feb 03    4,032    114,032          12              717              34
Thu Feb 04    3,668    124,943          12              711              34
Fri Feb 05    3,665    132,045          12              706              34
Sat Feb 06    2,797    108,502          12              701              34
Sun Feb 07    1,315     91,256          12              699              34
Mon Feb 08    1,592     90,346          12              697              34
Tue Feb 09    3,265     95,542          12              692              34
Weekly total 20,334    756,666   (avg 2,905 deaths/day, 108,095 cases / day)

Record deaths: 4,491 on Jan 12
Record new cases: 307,607 on Jan 08

Another excellent post on the subject.

It seems to me that the major social conflict is deaths vs socioeconomic disruption.

We started a war that has lasted 20 years because 3500 or so people were killed in an attack that is very umnlikely to be repeated. Yes that was horrible; I do not forgive or forget... I remember it every year and many times in between.

But we are losing almost that many people EVERY DAY and a substantial part of the nation is ignoring all the ways to reduce the deaths because of bizarre theories and simple refusalk to "inconvienence themselves". How is that even possible? Has some large percent of us simply lost the ability to relate causes to consequences?

Too many people seem to think "well *I* won't catch Covid-19, while others are dying around them. Well, so long as it isn't "THEM" I suppose, they can ignore. Until it is and they die and then they do stop objecting to the pandemic as "fake news", don't they. The dead don't talk...

Maybe they rationalize it. Granny was old anyway. That doctor had early cancer and it would have gotten him eventually. That schoolteacher ate a lot of fast food, so that was the REAL problem. Anything to avoid reality.

I understand that our children are not getting the education they deserve. I understand business are distressed or failing. Our question is "How many people should die every day to keep the routines going"? At what point do we have to legally (with penalties) force the people not protecting us from their own careless habits to act responsibly?

I say we do that today.

480,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US alone. This is not "fake news". This is not "it will go away in the Summer heat". The variants are worse. We're just STARTING through this nightmare...