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JUST A REMINDER: COVID CASES ARE FALLING. The graph below is from the New York Times daily collection of COVID data. This particular one charts the seven-day average of new COVID cases in the United States. And what is clear is that the number of new cases is falling. And not just a little bit, and not just for a day or two.by_covid1The number of new cases is down by nearly one-third in the last 14 days. But it was falling before that, and the total decrease is even bigger. If you look at the graph, the peak of new cases occurred on January 8 — a seven-day average of 259,564 new cases reported each day. Now, that average is 141,137 new cases per day. And the number reported Tuesday, February 2 was 114,173, giving hope that the decline will continue.
Hospitalizations are down, too. According to another Times graph, below, the seven-day average of hospitalizations peaked at 131,127 on January 12. The figure is now 98,820. Deaths, the lagging indicator in the crisis, have been basically flat since that time.by_covid2
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All the numbers are still high — higher nationally than they were in the terrible early days of the virus, when the New York region was badly hit. But they are going down. And they have been going down for weeks.
Meanwhile, the number of vaccinations is going up. According to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, there have been 33.7 million doses of the COVID vaccine delivered in the U.S. so far. In the last week, that worked out to an average of 1.32 million doses per day. Remember that President Biden's initial goal for the next 100 days was to administer one million doses per day. He later raised it to 1.5 million. Hopefully he will have to raise it further.
This will be a short newsletter. The message is that despite news of new strains and long lockdowns and vaccination screw-ups, the U.S. is making significant progress against COVID. It is not a political thing; the country made significant progress under President Trump, has continued that in the first weeks of President Biden, and hopefully will continue until Americans can fully resume their normal lives.
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