Even if you follow the news, you might be forgiven for thinking that the SARS-COV-2 pandemic was largely in the past.
You’d be wrong, of course.
It is still very much with us, and has been growing steadily since (shortly before) the end of the “omicron wave” when even Newsom starting talking about “endemic COVID”.
Here in my local county today two important stats rose back above where they were at the height of the “delta wave”.
Here’s the currently active cases:
And here’s the new cases per 100k population per day:
It’s been obvious that this was coming, of course, since the levels never actually stabilized after omicron; they started rising again right away.
Immediately removing most efforts to stop transmission of the disease will do that.
This should be extra worrying, though, because there’s a third stat that passed its delta peak here almost two weeks ago.
This is the percentage of tests given that are positive per day:
In fact, test positivity will probably surpass its 2020 holidays peak tomorrow making its current wave the second highest positivity curve of the pandemic.
This is important because the difference in the growth curve between test positivity and new cases shows that fewer asymptomatic folks are being tested, which indicates that the surveillance testing system is losing effectiveness.
Probably because it’s being intentionally disassembled.
(You may have noticed that the graphics here are from the local newspaper’s site rather than the county’s COVID tracking site; that’s because the County has let their site go so much that it doesn’t even render graphs on my browser anymore. That’s not a good sign that they’re on top of this at all.)
So:
- the deadly disease is still around
- and spreading quickly
- but our ability to track it is decreasing
Of course, what to do about this is still:
- avoid sharing enclosed spaces when you can
- wear a N95/KN95 grade mask when you can’t
But that’s been the best course all along.
And people not doing those two simple things is why we’re still in this situation, so I’m not that hopeful that they’ll start now.
