Oh, this gonna make me real popular with the experts.
*Updated. Current graphs below. The U.K. made a U-turn on its U-turn.
Have the vaccines "stalled" Delta over the U.S.? Perhaps because the vaxed are still getting infected, have a much heavier load of virus in their noses, can transmit similarly to the unvaxed and Delta is twice as contagious? One thing for sure: vaccines have not caused cases to drop.
-49% of all Americans were fully vaccinated at the time the below article was published on Aug. 3. When Delta ravaged India 4% of the Indian population was vaccinated. Like a speedy Cat-5 hurricane Delta blew out over India in roughly eight weeks.
-On June 21, 45% of all Americans were vaccinated and cases were at a low of 8,523 new cases in the U.S.
-Eight weeks later, 51% of all Americans have been vaccinated and cases are 157,450 with no sign of let up (CDC forecasts 199k/day on Sept. 18).
On [July 30], the U.S. government reported over 103,000 new COVID-19 infections, the first time in six months that the country has topped 100,000 infections in a single day and over 10 times the number of daily infections the U.S. was reporting just weeks ago.
...
But data from other countries is providing some hope that the U.S.’ recent Delta-driven wave may dissipate as fast as it emerged. In the U.K., daily confirmed cases of COVID-19 have fallen by 50% in the past week after the country experienced its largest wave of infections in months. In India, where the Delta variant first emerged, confirmed COVID-19 infections have dropped by a factor of ten in the last few months—after peaking at nearly 400,000 daily infections in May. No one knows for certain exactly why Delta cases have dropped so fast—and many experts are baffled.
Andy Slavitt, a former advisor on U.S. President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response team, recently suggested on Twitter that steep drop-offs in COVID-19 cases in places like the U.K. and India after Delta-driven waves may become a new paradigm for how COVID-19 spreads through communities. The data from the U.K. and India may mean that “Delta takes a quick rise [and] a quick drop,” Slavitt wrote on Twitter.
...the U.S.’s large population of unvaccinated individuals means that the recent surge of infections may be far from over. [Bullshit. the U.S. was 49% fully vaccinated on Aug. 3]
Lessons from India's second wave
Daily cases skyrocketed from roughly 10,000 in early February to a peak of 414,188 by May 7. But within just a month, cases had dropped nearly 80% to 85,801. On [August 3], the country recorded 30,549 new cases.
The Delta wave hit India as its vaccination campaign was still in its infancy; only 4% of Indians had received a first dose.
So the answer cannot be the unvaccinated, India 4%-U.S. 49%; could the answer be the vaccinated?
A U-turn in the U.K.
Through Aug. 21, NYT:
A better comparison for the U.S.'s Delta wave may be the recent surge in the U.K., where COVID-19 vaccines are widely available.
Why would the U.K. be better for comparison than India? We were, and are, over twelve times more vaxed than India and Delta has not reached its peak in the U.S.
Two weeks ago, [so, July 20] England took a gamble: In the face of sky-rocketing Delta variant COVID-19 cases, the British government eased all restrictions and completely opened up its economy (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland kept some restrictions).
Despite warnings from scientists, the bid seems to have paid off, as the number of new reported cases peaked on July 17 at 54,674 new reported cases, and then fell steeply. By August 2, new daily cases were less than half that number, with 21,952 new cases reported, according to Public Health England.
Dr. Peter Drobac, a phsycian director at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, points out that "the short answer is that nobody knows for sure" what's behind the drop.
Most notably, the U.K. has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, ahead of the U.S. While the U.S. vaccination rates lie at around 48% fully vaccinated, the U.K. is ahead at 57% of the population. In the U.K., anyone over 18 is entitled to a vaccine, while in the U.S. anyone over 12 can be vaccinated.
The U.K. at the time was 1.19x more fully vaxed than the U.S. The U.S. was over 12x more fully vaxed than India.
...
...while testing has declined 12.4% over the week of July 21 to July 27, this doesn’t match up to the 33% decline in COVID-19 cases in the same time period.
The decline in cases has left David Mackie, chief European economist for J.P. Morgan Securities, scratching his head. Mackie said in a market note that while it is hard to fully explain the dramatic collapse in new infections, he is "reluctant to abandon the idea that the Delta variant will be a problem over time," as its reproduction number is too high and the level of vaccine efficacy is too modest.
But he does note that "it is hard to argue against the idea that the current Delta wave in the U.K. is turning out to be much, much milder than we anticipated."
Through Aug. 21, NYT:
Experts in the U.S. don't necessarily expect a domestic Delta wave to follow the U.K.'s lead, namely because of the difference in vaccination rates. The U.S.’s lagging vaccine campaign may mean the Delta variant has more staying power in the U.S.
“[The Delta variant] has more room to spread, certainly, in unvaccinated populations,” says Ashley St. John, an immunologist at the Duke-NUS Medical School. There are 93 million Americans eligible to receive COVID-19 shots that have opted not to get them.
...
"Vaccines really do help prevent hospitalizations and deaths," she said. Vaccinated people are ten times less likely to be hospitalized or die than those who are not vaccinated. But she explained that vaccinated individuals are more likely to catch and spread the Delta variant than previous variants of COVID-19.
"Our models need to be revised for this new data reality. We need really good information on the probability of breakthrough infections."-Christina Ramirez, a biostatistics professor at the University of California Los Angeles.
The uncertainty about how COVID-19 is now spreading makes it difficult for Ramirez and other modelers to tell whether the U.S. is in the early stages of a larger wave or if it will mimic the U.K.'s sharp decline in infections in coming days and weeks.
Now, on August 22, we know: we were in the early stages.
