Today, the United States passed 80 million COVID-19 cases. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 80,019,002 cases resulting in 978,645 deaths representing a mortality rate of 1.2%.
The good news is that the spread of COVID has been slowing. After taking 13 days to go from 78 to 79 million cases, it has taken 29 days (more than four weeks) to go from 79 to 80 million. Let us remember that 2022 began with the country adding 1 million plus new cases everyday via the Omicron variant. So this is a vast improvement. But can this improvement be sustained?
This is only half as good as the 58 days it took to go from 33 to 34 million cases between May 19th and July 16th of last year. But by August 1st, 1 million new cases had been added due to the Delta variant and things went downhill from there. It has taken us more than 6 months to get back into a significantly positive trajectory. And yet COVID cases are on the rise yet again in New York, Colorado, Texas, Kentucky, Delaware and much of New England including here in Massachusetts via the BA.2 Omicron subvariant. Whether this will be followed by a rise in hospitalizations remains to be seen.
Of further note, the CDC and FDA have approved a second booster of Pfizer or Moderna for adults 50 and over. This puts me in an interesting spot as I turn 50 this September. By the time I am eligible it will have been nearly 9 months since I had my Moderna booster. Of course, conditions could worsen which might cause the CDC and FDA to expand eligibility. I can hope I am in a position where it will be safe to wait.
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