The Bottom Drops Out Of Covid

The chart above gives the daily average of new COVID cases reported to the US CDC as of this week. The level now is basically what it was last summer, before new restrictions were imposed by various state authorities in the fall. From Monday's LA County health department press release:

The County is steadily making progress in reducing the average number of daily new cases of COVID-19. The seven-day average number of cases by episode date has now decreased to less than 1,000 per day.

There are 1,578 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized and 31% of these people are in the ICU. Testing results are available for nearly 5,840,000 individuals with 19% of people testing positive. Today's daily test positivity rate is 2.5%.

Public Health has not yet seen any increases due to gatherings that may have happened during the Super Bowl and Presidents Day weekend.

This trend hasn't had much media coverage. In particular, as the LA County press release notes, the predicted surge following the holidays didn't occur, and the decline throughout the last two months is probably not due to vaccinations. This story reports,

Positive Covid tests skyrocketed throughout the fall and winter, with positive tests reaching a high of just under 300,000 one day in early January.

Following that peak, cases tumbled downward in what was effectively an unbroken decline in positive test results for two months. Daily cases late last week reached levels not seen since October. The decline appears to have leveled off, but rates remain significantly lower than at the beginning of January.

. . . The welcome news has nevertheless been perplexing for many scientists who are struggling to explain why Covid cases are plunging so sharply.

Robert Cook, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida, admitted that it's "hard to explain exactly what is the contributing the most" to the plunge.

One thng I've noted is that up to now, there had been no change in the public service ads on Facebook, with just the standard wear-a-mask-stop-the-spread message. But this morning, I could find no PSAs at all. Even so, in California, 98% of the population had been wearing masks and cooperating with other measures since at least last fall. As of now, vaccinations here are still only available to front-line workers and over-65s, so I don't believe vaccine has been a factor in the decline.

For now, I'll chalk this up to yet another failure of the COVID conventional wisdom promoted by the pubic health establishment and the media. The predictions of "dark winter" and post-holiday surges simply weren't borne out. We'll have to see what else develops in coming days and weeks.