Will the United States have a fourth Covid-19 wave?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-disease-expert-says-us-155713196.html

The B.1.1.7 is now at least 20% of the new cases; a number I saw in another article. This article now says 30% to 40%. The CDC had anticipated it would be the dominant strain (which means 50% + 1) by the end of March so we may be getting there.

It seems like the surge in Europe started in various countries once the B.1.1.7 reached more than 50% there.

So, maybe the encouraging drops we've seen since the peak on January 7th, will be over soon.

Or maybe we'll contain the theoretical surge, thanks to more and more vaccines. Our supply is supposed to dramatically increase in the weeks ahead.

Frankly at this point I don't know which trend will prevail: we'll beat the B.1.1.7 with more vaccines (and they are just as efficacious for the B.1.1.7 as they are for the ancestral strain), or the B.1.1.7 will beat us and cause a fourth wave.

To be continued...

 

I said, to be continued, and it looks good. Florida has reached more than 50% of B.1.1.7 among new cases, but is NOT seeing a surge in overall number of cases. Much the opposite, the numbers keep dropping. Factors include hotter/wetter weather (both decrease transmission), natural immunity, and vaccinations. It is estimated that either through natural infection or vaccination or both, 40% of Floridians are now immune to the ancestral strain of the SARS-CoV-2, and the B.1.1.7 although more infectious and more lethal, is fully susceptible to antibodies produced by previous disease or vaccination. It is looking like in the fight between vaccines and variants, we're winning and we may NOT have a fourth surge! Great news! Still worthy of being vigilant but it is indeed looking good, given that Florida is the state with the most B.1.1.7 so if it isn't causing a surge there, maybe it won't cause one, anywhere.

 

Hm... the "to be continued" thing is looking less favorable now, as opposed to my post above. Last 4 days in the United States:
New cases - Deaths
43,091 - 825
52,614 - 1,068
53,251 - 1,248
62,794 - 1,289
Still too early to know, we do have some ups and downs in a serrated pattern.
But it's starting to look like an uptick, again.
Given the lifting of some precautions, Spring Break, and a sharp increase in air travel over the last few days, it is not impossible that we'll see this uptick getting worse and worse in the next couple of weeks. We'll see.

 

Europe and Brazil in very bad shape. We're still doing relatively well... but there is the concern that Europe only went haywire once the B.1.1.7 became the dominant strain, which is in the brink of happening here.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/europe-brazil-getting-slammed-covid-081631766.html

So we're not off the hook yet.

Strange that nobody seems to be interested in this thread... here I am, talking to myself...

 

I'm interested. I've been paying attention. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and updates.

 

Well, according to Worldometers the UK had 95 deaths yesterday while the US had 1706. 6k new cases in the UK compared to 62k in the US.
Mainland Europe is doing worse with 268 deaths in France, 201 in Germany and 117 in Spain. Italy is worse again with 423.
If the US still hasn't got the Kent strain yet you could be in serious trouble.

 

I think eye of the hurricane. We can't ignore the politics of what's happening and lots of countries are under stressors from extremist groups. US is a pretty good case of this happening, and my guess is the summer is only going to get worse.

 

When I first saw the thread title, I my first thought was you were talking about the economy.

The economic impact is going to be several times worse than the number of people who actually directly died from this.

 

Yes, it will. But not just because of what you're probably thinking (the economic harm from the containment measures) but also, because of the LARGE number of people who didn't die from their bout with Covid-19, but developed lung fibrosis, heart scars, renal insufficiency, brain fog, strokes, and so on and so forth, which will result in decreased productivity and shortened life span as well as medical expenses.

 

Ah, the Emperor's New Clothes are stunning!

 

I saw this encouraging paragraph in an article:

"Ultimately, however, experts expect the downward pressure from America’s accelerating vaccination effort — which is starting to expand, ahead of schedule, beyond the initial priority groups even as it shields vulnerable seniors from hospitalization and death and protects frontline workers from infection and transmission — to temper and finally suppress most of the upward pressure attributed to variants. In short, the U.S. might see some leveling off during its final descent out of the pandemic. But with each passing day of vaccination — now averaging 2.5 million doses every 24 hours — a full-blown fourth wave looks less and less likely."

Fingers crossed! I hope we'll be winning the war against variants!

 

2.5 million a day is impressive. We're managing about half a million a day in a population of about 68 million.
Let's hope vaccine cynicism doesn't stop us reaching herd immunity levels of acceptance.

 

I'm still concerned. Today we're having the 5th consecutive day with an increase in cases. So far, and the day isn't over, 63,089, therefore already more than yesterday. 1,141 deaths so far is not that great, either, 148 below yesterday but again, the day is not over yet.

 

Our R number is reported as being between 0.6 and 0.9.
Almost 50% of the adult population have received at least one jab.
New infections dropped by 2% in the last 7 days. Germany's increased by 49%. The epicentre of the Kent variant seems to have moved on.

 

With all due respect, and I MEAN that, this has been going on for about 18 months and people cannot remain fearful indefinitely. It's just one of those human attributes. That level of stress just exhausts people.
I'm new here but I seem to recall a few threads where you were consulted as a real expert in medicine in general or maybe even virology. I have a question based on that assumption. Has this virus behaved in ways that are unique and more deadly than viruses in general? My understanding of virology is extremely limited but is it not true that all of them mutate and adapt to environmental conditions?

 

So, final numbers for today, 65,981 new cases and 1,268 deaths. The number of new cases continues to climb. As we know, death numbers lag behind.

 

No answer yesterday....

 

Today, the usual Saturday drop. This serrated pattern has been like this forever, due to poor reporting during the weekend, so we can't draw conclusions until next week (it's best to look at 7-day averages... its just that this little uptick is getting me nervous). One thing is concerning: rather than a Saturday drop, my state actually had MORE new cases reported today than Friday. That doesn't bode well. But I know I shouldn't over-react to isolated pieces of data.

I think the outcome continues to be uncertain for the US. The more we vaccinate, the least likely we'll have a fourth wave.

We need to cross our fingers that the P.1 doesn't get a foothold here. It's the most infectious variant, 220% more infections, and it is absolutely ravaging Brazil. Even the politicians... today they lost their 3rd Senator to Covid-19. UTI capacity is being surpassed in all major cities and people are starting to die while they wait for a hospital bed, suffocated (the tragedy that happened in Manaus when the P.1 first hit, with hospitals 100% full and lacking oxygen, is starting to happen everywhere in Brazil now that the P.1 has spread to the entire country).

The pandemic is entirely out-of-control there in the world's worst outbreak ever, since this thing first surfaced in Wuhan. And by now it's becoming crystal clear that the P.1 hits younger people and kills them much more often than the ancestral strain. My colleagues there are dismayed and afraid; I was just on the phone with one of them. The vaccine rollout there is a disaster; they basically have no more vaccine as they have used up their meager stocks of AstraZeneca and CoronaVac, and their president is an imbecile who constantly undermines not only masks and social distance but also the vaccines, and instead preaches hydroxychloroquine (probably the only moron left who still believes in HCQ - even the first proponent of HCQ, Didier Raoult, has taken back his belief that it works for Covid-19).

CNN called Brazil a global threat (they may become, even more than they already are, the cradle of deadly variants), with "no vaccines, no leadership, and no end in sight." The president of the Senate and the main opposition candidate for next year's presidential election have asked the United States to help them with vaccines, which they want to purchase for a fair price - they want our excess supply of AstraZeneca since it's not even approved here but is approved there. They want us to sell it to them, since the companies themselves cannot fulfill short-notice orders because their production is already promised to wiser countries that bought them first - Pfizer offered 70 million doses to Brazil's idiotic president Bolsonaro, but he declined..

However, while these opposition leaders have reached out to the USA and wrote a letter to Biden, the president himself is against it because he doesn't want the opposition to score points, so he is not willing to officially request it. Given no request, the USA has shared vaccines with Canada and Mexico but not Brazil. What a hot mess.

The more conservative among us may think, "who cares? We need to take care of the USA, not of other countries" but this ignores the fact that the virus has no borders and if we allow a country to entirely collapse, it's not only bad for the world's economy (Brazil is a major player, something like the 10th economy in the world) but also, uncontrolled outbreaks is how the virus mutates, and with the P.1 already being the worst variant given its capacity to re-infect those who were previously immune, if this thing mutates even more and comes back to bite us, even more deadly and ready to re-infect naturally immune or vaccinated people, then all the progress we have made could be jeopardized.

This is why it makes economic and epidemiological sense to help Brazil, in addition to humanitarian sense. All that they want is that we sell them the millions of AstraZeneca doses we have, and this will not affect our own vaccination drive because the AZ shot is not even approved here.

Still, with their president opposing everything, it's probably not going to happen. Some in Brazil are talking impeachment and charges of genocide. So the situation there might change if they kick Bolsonaro out... but the country is in such chaos right now that not even organized political action seems feasible.

We are looking at a train wreck, the meltdown of an entire large and economically important country. The P.1 is running through the population like wildfire, re-infecting people, and killing people who are 22 years old. This is damn scary.

We're fortunate that there's been only a handful of P.1 cases in the USA. Let's hope it stays this way.

 

Bolsonaro has been called 'Brazil's Trump'
Isn't conservatism wonderful?

 

We're always in the eye of some sort of hurricane

 

Africa perennially comes in with the worst outcomes in any disease outbreaks. They have the least advanced medical availability as well as the worst hygienic practices. WHY aren't we seeing huge numbers of deaths?

 

I think there are a few likely reasons
Firstly, they had good testing and quarantining procedures in place due to previous outbreaks of serious diseases like ebola.
They also had good awareness of the dangers of highly infectious diseases and less resistance to counter measures like social distancing and mask wearing.
They also have less mobility amongst the population and across the borders.
Less positively, they might just not have the capacity to record cases and deaths accurately. One president actually stopped testing when the number of recorded cases reached 500.

 

Probably because HCQ use is and has been widespread over generations.

 

Don't know who you're talking to (my Ignore list is getting long again) or the details of what you're responding to, but given the Ebola angle, if you're talking about low numbers in Africa, two other factors are younger population, and almost no obesity. The latter is particularly important given that obesity has been postulated as THE risk factor for fatality from Covid-19 right next to age.

 

Yes it's someone normally on my ignore list too but I made the mistake of opening their post.
It was a question about Africa which I think was attempting to imply the low numbers there prove it's some kind of politically motivated hoax.
Your two factors are probably more relevant than all mine. I keep forgetting the obesity angle which probably goes a long way to explain the high rates in both your and my countries.