Cases have changed -20% on the two-week average.
Hospitalizations are down -22%.
Deaths have flattened twice as close toward zero as the other two, at 10%.
A bad sign, +'s and -'s, as New York and California opened today.
Cases have remained on a stable plateau of a little over 14k/day each iteration of the 7-day daily average since June 6. The average June 9-15 is 13,704, June 8-14 it was 14,018, and June 7-13 14,291 to give the last three figures.
The Hospitalizations daily average over seven days is incomplete on the two titled dates.
Deaths daily 7-day average since June 1 is under 400/day. The last three iterations are 340/day June 9-15, 339 June 9-14, and 361 June 7-13.
Vaccines have also plateaued at just over 1M/day since the June 1-7 iteration of the 7-day daily average. That strikes me as almost heroic given the resistance to vaccination, it may not be heroic but that was my reaction. President Biden is still on track to fall short of his 70% 18+ age, at least one shot goal on July 4. The New York Times projects he will hit 68%.
Summarizing, from where I sit: we are not able to outrun the virus at 1.1M-1.2M daily shots when we have near fully reopened. Exactly one year ago there were 22,123 Cases June 9-15, 2020. Cases then were just beginning their summer ascent to 66.6k. We are not in for a repeat of the summer of 2020, Cases were on a smooth clear descent this year before leveling at 13,524 June 6, the first accretion of the floor we have had since, but the raw numbers from 2020 and 2021 are just too close for comfort. As the country reopens now, as it did then, the floor that Cases are on now will be raised. We are likely to see a spur rising off that floor as well, with the two largest states fully reopened. There are fewer hosts for the virus now, to be sure, but the burgeoning immunity, natural and by injection, has not prevented a hard floor from being laid down, nor that floor from being raised slightly almost as a single piece since May 30-June 5.
Deaths one year ago were an average 725/day and on a pretty smooth, for Deaths, descent to 481 June 25-July 1. This year Deaths were on a more typical herky-jerky descent from April 1-7, 2021 (730) to May 26-June 1 (380) when the first accretion of the current bumpy, rock-strewn plateau of ~400/day was laid.
To change the metaphor, the tide raises or lowers all boats. The tide is ebbing now but its retreat is slowing and the water will rise again, not as a Fourth Wave but steadily, with some surface turbulence, occasionally whitecaps, and this will continue through the summer, into the fall when schools and close gatherings indoors and out return, into the winter when the annual flu season will chop the water, and through the winter into the spring of 2022 when many more people will be immunized and will begin to end their cloistering and to disperse.
