GOOD NEWS: The US is finally on the cusp of the test positivity rate declining below 5%, a key WHO guidepost.
Some thoughts.
This may happen as we cross the grim 200,000 official death milestone. An incredibly expensive price to reach this milestone. 2/
The impact on mental illness & addiction has been hard as well. All of these are part of the cost of the pandemic & our poor response. 3/
Data as we know lags our behavior. So our recent improvement Is the result of actions taken in August— which itself was a response to how bad July was.
We will have as many of these bumps as it takes us to learn the lessons we don’t repeat. 4/
Labor Day travel, university and college life and big super-spreader events present our biggest risks. We will get our report card at the end of September and October on how we did. 5/
One reason the aggregate numbers will get smaller is we are moving from cases in big cities alone to bedroom communities to rural areas. In states from MN to GA, rural counties represent a lot of the growth. 6/
The number of new cases we have every day is nothing to brag about, but hopefully it can be pushed lower.
Without more aggressive approaches, we won’t be likely to crush it. 7/
Still, there is no reason not to celebrate the good news. Even it’s a temporary reprieve, it can be measured in many lives saved.
It’s also important to have gratitude for the people who have sacrificed for others so we could see this improvement. 8/
There will be future rises but we have the ability to make them smaller and contain them faster.
We obviously also have the ability to skip. This is hard & takes patience. But if that happens we know what to do. /end
One more comment: people have asked about whether there is something different about the numbers.
Yes. Here are some...
With fewer people in the hospital, the test positive rate drops. With more college kids on campus, the same.
But other indicators tell me that this is at least good news (as of our August activity). Won’t know September impact for a while.
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