The United States has now passed 82 million COVID cases. According to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, there have been 82,107,519 cases resulting in 998,346 deaths representing a mortality rate of 1.2%.
After taking 29 days to go from 79 to 80 million cases and 27 days to go from 80 to 81 million cases (essentially four weeks), it took 15 days to go from 81 to 82 million cases. Of course, this is a far cry from the 1 million plus cases a day which were being recorded at the height of Omicron in early January. Though it is reasonable to ask if two new Omicron variants accelerate this pace. It is also reasonable to ask if the surge which has taken place over the past 15 days is a consequence of last month's federal court decision to overturn the mask mandate on public transportation and in public transportation facilities.
At this point, the key question is hospitalizations. There has been a slight increase in hospitalizations over the past month though this has gone from just under 10,000 to a little over 15,000. The question remains if hospitalizations will spike like they last summer during Delta when it neared 100,000 hospitalizations and at the beginning of 2022 when it exceeded 150,000.
A great deal of the answer is up to us. In which case, it probably won't be a good answer especially among those of us who are no longer asking the question.
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