Incidence No Longer A Good Indicator For Course Of Covid
With testing greatly reduced and reporting delayed, other factors become more important
With the blue line in my graphs of lesser importance, the red (mortality) and orange lines (hospitalisations) are left the most reliable indicators. But even these are less reliable. Adding to this the data from waste water, the course of the R-value and the test-positivity rate, there is a clear indication that things are getting for the better in the USA (including Washington State), France and Germany.
But, as the red and orange lines also indicate, deaths and hospitalisations seem to oscillate within a certain corridor, specific to each country. So while these numbers are currently going down as well, we should not be surprised when they come up again.
Tunisia's data are unreliable and the official data for last week are also contradictory. But hospitals are clearly not overwhelmed by patients, which is a good indicator.
Is it now over?
It depends. If you are willing to risk suffering through a week of hell, or a year of debilitating side effects, then you can pretend it is.
For the time being, I personally would still mask in indoor places where lots of people from different places gather, especially planes and possibly trains.
The pandemic has brought us immense progress in vaccine development, namely speed. Of course, it also brought us an increased number of vaccine refusals, but that is another story.
During the last months we have been largely affected by a trinity of viruses: SARS-CoV-1, influenza and RSV. Moderna, Pfizer, GSK and Sanofi have now reported a vaccine against RSV (ars technica, PDF), which has been tested on the older population or on pregnant women. The mRNA technology is playing an important role in the development of these vaccines and there is hope for an annual mRNA cocktail against these three any potentially other respiratory viruses.
Thus, this horrible pandemic may lead to something good: no more fear of severe winter infections. This, of course, will only be true for the affluent countries in the world unless they were suddenly to discover their long-lost conscience.