1892

My feeling is it’s entirely real, because we saw the same thing in the UK and India. Delta roars through and infects everybody who isn’t vaccinated, then it runs out of people and dies back down.

Not to make a prediction, but unless we get another variant that evades vaccines and immunity, we’re in the home stretch of this thing. Sadly, for most nations, they got through it by everybody getting sick and somewhere around 1% of the population dying.

1893

It’s real, all the metrics have plummeted, not just deaths.

Also there’s a professor down here at my University who puts together the data in different visualizations and the death rate reporting lag graph also shows the same thing.

1894

I’m expecting another upward bounce in numbers during and after the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday gauntlet, but I hope it’s a relatively modest one.

1895

Ok, sounds good. That is reasonable.

But I hope you understand my skepticism was because Death Santis and crew were caught manipulating reporting data in a way to make things appear better than they were. So I just don’t trust Florida numbers on their face.

1896

I understand that feeling very well.

1897

And while I understand that this is a comparatively local effect, this is why I’m genuinely surprised that the national case numbers have been totally flat around 70k cases for the last two weeks (Monday anomaly notwithstanding). I was really hoping Delta would just burn through the available unvaccinated bodies and we’d be done with this shit. Instead, we’re on a plateau going into winter.

1898

Saw on the news just now that Dr. Raul Pino says that Orange County Florida probably has herd immunity. If you only count residential communities. And ignore visitors.

This guy is a doctor speaking for my community. We are so fucked.

1899

There are a bunch of clusters that somehow evaded infection earlier and now are spiking, mostly in the west. New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, Minnesoda, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, California, and Utah are all up.

But if you look at the regions closely, for example, New Mexico the spike isn’t in Albuquerque (35/100k), it’s in the smaller counties in the far NW, SW, and mid-east. “De Baca” county for example has 163/100k yet it’s the least populous county. In California, it isn’t LA, San Diego, or San Francisco that’s doing poorly-- LA county is 13/100k. It’s Inyo county, population 19k, that’s at 103/100k.

It’s completely plausible that most of Florida reached herd immunity. It’s just stupid to say it, because the truth is we don’t actually know the answer.

1900

Can you point me to a map or resource to get a clear look at that? I’m looking at WaPo’s map but the trend your describing isn’t clearly visible (not at all suggesting you’re wrong, just looking for a better visualization I can follow).

Fair enough and yeah, predicting any of this is incredibly difficult.

1901

Yes, the NYT has the best data visualizations I’ve found.

1902

Oh cool, is that actually not paywalled? Even their COVID stuff has often been popping up a “subscribe or fuck off” message lately.

1903

Sorry I don’t know, I have a NYT account.

1904

I missed this earlier. Day 3 is when things went from bad to worse for me. Are you still doing OK?

1905

Yep, thanks for asking! Aside from a sore throat and getting tired more quickly than usual, I’m back to normal. Which is the same thing that happens with my yearly cold every year, so I’m perfectly familiar with handling it. I’m convinced that the vaccine blunted the progress of infection and kept my symptoms mild. I’m hoping to test negative sometime this coming week as the virus works its way out of my system. I won’t be resuming my daily runs for a while, but other than that, I’m in pretty good shape.

1906

That’s great news! Glad you’re on the mend.

1907

Good to hear. Hope you fully recover with no further ill effects!

1908

You’re probably in the part of NC that has vaxx rates as high as NYC (The Triangle is very highly vaxxed, Triad and Charlotte less so)

The red parts of NC are like Mississippi numbers.

1909

Fantastic news, Skip! Glad to hear you’re doing okay.

We’re north of Charlotte but still in the higher vaxxed amount area. Still, I’ve been just into rural Tennessee, as well as in the NC rural mountains for two additional trips and we’ve been okay so far. BUT, we wear masks when out and up until the time we eat/drink. We also try to avoid anything crowded. I’m under the impression I will eventually get it, so for now, just trying to do what I can without becoming a full on hermit or losing my job requiring occasional travel.

1910

Whew, glad to hear that!

1911

I got my booster shot yesterday. My first shots were Pfizer, this time they gave me Moderna. So I’m a vaccine mixer, and I expect my superpowers to emerge soon. I promise not to be as big a jerk as Homelander.

So far, nothing worse than the first two: minor soreness around the injection site, feeling a little blah. But, a couple of ibuprofen & I’m basically fine. I also have the recent memory of the Shingles vaccine a few months ago, so this is nothing compared to how that thing downed me for a day or so each time.