I just listened to the latest Death Panel podcast which, to no one's surprise, has a pretty bleak outlook (with good reason) about the covid situation in the USA right now and in the near future, but I also recently traveled a little through Canada (leaving quarantine, more or less, for the first time since the pandemic began, masking outside our car or hotel room almost 100% of the time) and had a quick look at the covid data for the USA and the world. I know the data is purposefully inadequate and incomplete, but globally and within the USA it looks as though—dare I say it—covid is on the decline. Will there be another massive spike or some vicious new variant in the winter or fall or some other catastrophe which makes us long for the days of covid, maybe. Is this pure and hopeful speculation, probably. Are there still a ton of people who are sick, disabled, or seriously affected by covid (losing wages, jobs, family, etc.), 100% yes. But is it also possible that we will soon get a vaccine from our comrades in Cuba/China/Vietnam that will stop covid and all its variants permanently? Also possibly yes.
Anecdotally, traveling through Quebec, it honestly did seem like covid is over, or at least that very few people care about it. Few people were masked but nobody seemed sick. I just got back from a bus station in the rural northeastern USA, however, and there was one dude there who almost certainly had covid—he was coughing like crazy, I mean he had one of the worst coughs I've ever heard, and he looked like shit. School has also been in session for about three weeks where I live and I haven't heard anything about anyone getting sick there. We homeschool our kids because of the pandemic but they still play (masked and outside only) with neighborhood kids in the afternoon and as far as I know they haven't said anything about serious health problems at the school—which is super lib and where I believe most of the people inside the building are vaccinated.
So I'm curious about what everyone is feeling/thinking about covid right now based on the limited data we can access as well as your own personal experience with what's up around you. Am I right, am I wrong, is this post a total waste of time? Let me know.
Check the wastewater reports and excess morbidity rates; Covid is far from over, people have just stopped caring about it. Long covid is gut punching the population while making sure there's just enough people vulnerable to get killed by the initial infections. The world is going to look dramatically different in 10, maybe even 5 years. And not in a good way.
I'm doing my best to look through the data here (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance) but they make it as complicated and annoying as possible. As far as I can tell, it looks like the overall covid situation is still really bad. It also seems like they may be decreasing the amount of covid wastewater testing they'll be doing in the future, but who knows.
I use biobot.io which is what the cdc uses but is presented differently. Most of the US still seems to be above, or around) the levels of the peak of last year's Delta surge, sadly. Yeah, idk what I'll do when they stop testing. Hermit mode for good, I guess.
Thanks, that's a much better site.
Welcome.👍