XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.usa
XPost: sci.med.diseases

Newly recorded COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States, which
rose dramatically this fall, now seem to be declining. According to Worldometer's numbers, the seven-day average of daily new cases fell by
18 percent between December 18 and yesterday. The seven-day average of
daily deaths has fallen by 19 percent since December 22.

Daily new cases in the U.S. are still five times as high as they were
in mid-September, while daily deaths are three times as high as they
were in mid-October. But the seven-day average of daily deaths, about
2,200 as of yesterday, has dropped slightly below last spring's peak
after exceeding it for several weeks. The recent trends, assuming they continue, are a hopeful sign that the winter might not be quite as
deadly as many people feared.

Back in October, for instance, Joe Biden said "the expectation is we'll
have another 200,000 Americans dead [from COVID-19] between now and the
end of the year." That implied a total U.S. death toll of about 423,000
by January 1. Per Worldometer, the current death toll is about 342,000.
With four days to go in the year, it looks like Biden's projection will
be off by 70,000 or so.

Allowing for the lag between laboratory confirmation and death, the
recent drop in fatalities corresponds with a decrease in daily new
cases recorded in late November. Since newly identified infections are
falling again, it is plausible that daily deaths will continue to fall
as well.

But for how long? Since COVID-19 symptoms that might prompt someone to
seek testing appear two to 14 days after infection, the increase in
confirmed cases following the dip in late November is consistent with
the fear that gatherings over Thanksgiving weekend would boost virus transmission. The impact of Christmas and New Year's Eve gatherings may
not be fully apparent until mid-January or later.

The pessimistic take on the recent dip in daily new cases is that it
simply represents a falloff from the surge associated with
Thanksgiving, which suggests that cases and deaths will rise again as infections tied to Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations show up in
the official tallies. A more optimistic interpretation is that the
dramatic increases in cases and deaths have encouraged wider and more consistent compliance with COVID-19 precautions.

Did the new legal restrictions imposed by many states also play a role?
Maybe, although a comparison of the two most populous states seems
inconsistent with that hypothesis. California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom
has imposed a raft of new restrictions, has seen about the same decline
in daily new cases as Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a more
lenient approach. Texas has seen a bigger decline in daily deaths.

However you interpret current trends, they show that continued
increases in new cases and deaths are not inevitable. The way Americans
choose to behave in the months until vaccines are widely available will determine exactly how deadly the pandemic proves to be.

--
Trump won.

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