Indeed. His graphs show the R values for Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri are not increasing, but they are still above 1.0. This means that the cases will continue to rise in those states, and ARE NOT peaking. Although to be fair, he does say “starting to peak”.
Sort of like " This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." - W. Churchill.
Nah, it was something else.
US could again see 200K Covid-19 cases daily, former CDC director says
The US could see nearly four times the current rate of Covid-19 cases in the next four to six weeks as the Delta variant spreads and the population hits a wall on vaccinations, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CNN.
“We’re heading into a rough time. It’s likely, if our trajectory is similar to that in the United Kingdom, that we could see as many as 200,000 cases a day,” Dr. Tom Frieden said Monday, adding the US likely won’t see the “horrific death tolls” of earlier in the pandemic thanks to the number of vulnerable people who are vaccinated. Frieden was CDC director during the Obama administration.
I thought he said cases would peak in october but maybe I got that confused with the other study showing an October peak.
200k/day in four to six weeks makes more sense, given the current trajectory, lack of vaccination progress and complete exhaustion with any form of public health common sense.
It also makes sense that the death toll will not be as high as in previous peaks, given what the doctor says, that many of the vulnerable people have been immunized.
Well, that’s depressing.
That may be true, but 20-30% of those victims are going to be dealing with long-term injury. Some will be disabled; others will need psychiatric treatment. There’s a LOT more behind these numbers that is not being discussed, I’m afraid. And the vaccines are NOT providing the level of protection that we’re being led to believe.
Well, I spoke with that immunolgist friend of mine today and he’s seeing R-naught values of up to 9. I think 4-5 is what’s currently being reported, but – and I don’t know what study he’s been keeping his eye on – he says it can be as high as 9, so he’s definitely revised his peak to much sooner than mid/end-October. No exact guess from him, but he says it could be a month to six weeks. On the plus side, he says that could bring us herd immunity much sooner whether we like it or not… But he says he is seeing strain on hospital beds up in the Milwaukee area where he works, and it’s looking like it’s spreading like wildfire again.
Today’s stats on ICU beds in Milwaukee Metro hospitals don’t show too much of a burden, average is 54% occupancy of ICU beds for the metro area, average MKE region hospital has 6 cases of covid in ICU, with 27 available beds. Cases are definitely up in WI as are hospital admissions, but unless staffing is way lower than it was, it doesn’t look like it’s a real strain yet, not like it was. I don’t see any places closed for admissions yet.
I fear that will change quick though.
At this point, I still don’t believe we have any idea what the basic reproduction number is and are mostly attempting to figure out the effective number, which can vary drastically based on external factors (mask wearing or sneezing freely, social distancing or mass orgies, singing in church or staying at home, etc.). It’s the more important number anyway, but changes from week to week and location to location based on current local behaviors. It could easily be 0.8 over there last week and 4.7 over here the week before.
Yeah, a health professional in the wapo article on tge cdc new delta data was saying that this is as contagious as chickenpox. That’s an r naught of around 10.
It is quite possible that I am over-reporting his words. 
I know during the thick of it, it was quite hectic where he’s at, and he’s seeing signs of it going that way again. I may have put the word “strain” in his mouth.
The report describes 469 COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts residents that were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. (Most of the other cases tied to the Cape Cod outbreak are from individuals living outside of Massachusetts.)
Of these, 346, or 74%, were fully vaccinated.
Thats depressing.
Your article states that nearly all adults in that town are vaccinated. So 70% being vaccinated is not that surprising. Plus, this cluster appeared after a major party weekend.
One has to be careful about reporting like this. A crucial factor is the percentage of people vaccinated. Consider this: in a community with 100% vaccination, ALL of the new cases, however few there are, will be among the vaccinated.
My understanding is that a very high percentage is vaccinated in Provincetown, so this is a big factor.
Perhaps things have changed, but back in the day when I was there more often, Provincetown was full of visitors far more than locals.
If I have my facts right, though, the information in that article came from a leaked CDC memo, which makes me highly suspicious that there is more to follow. CDC voluntarily revised masked guidance but they didn’t voluntarily release its own findings about how contagious the variant is – we just somehow got it. And CDC still doesn’t have good data on breakthrough cases - we’re dealing with very inaccurate estimates.
I’ll add that if the internally reported (leaked) findings are accurate, then CDC should be a lot more aggressive in its message. This is a national health emergency. It’s great that the vaccines prevent death and hospitalization - at least we think. But there are a lot of complications that can last many months after getting infected. There’s too much we don’t know. What we do know is that this is a highly infectious disease and it has a range of potentially serious consequences.