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canyonwalkerI check up on Coronavirus statistics every few days. My favorite sites to monitor for data are The New York Times' Coronavirus in the US page, the Times' California Coronavirus Map and Case Count, and the State of California's Covid-19 Tracking Covid-19 in California page.
What these sources show recently is good news, relatively speaking. Rates of new cases have been dropping over the past few weeks. Nationwide we're dropped from over 220,000 daily new cases in early January to about half that the past few days. In California the drop has been even steeper, a 60% decrease in the past few weeks.
Why the drop? The data themselves don't clearly tell us. Some would argue it's the effect of Covid-19 vaccines rolling out. I disagree, as inoculation is not widespread yet. Per the NYT page above, only 2% of the country has received the full vaccine. That's too little to have such an impact on case rates yet.
I attribute the drop in rates to us getting past the holiday season and all the social non-distancing and travel it traditionally entails. Over Thanksgiving many people I know traveled to visit friends and relatives in their homes, in contravention to all public health rules and recommendations. Unsurprisingly, case rates exploded upward as I showed in one of my blogs. More people traveled for Christmas and/or New Year, too. That created a surge on top of the surge. Now, as fewer people are making excuses to justify travel, the surge is subsiding. Check the NYT charts in the first link above and you'll see we're back to pre-Thanksgiving rates. While that's not great— it's still way higher than over the summer— it's at least a step or two back in the right direction.
What these sources show recently is good news, relatively speaking. Rates of new cases have been dropping over the past few weeks. Nationwide we're dropped from over 220,000 daily new cases in early January to about half that the past few days. In California the drop has been even steeper, a 60% decrease in the past few weeks.
Why the drop? The data themselves don't clearly tell us. Some would argue it's the effect of Covid-19 vaccines rolling out. I disagree, as inoculation is not widespread yet. Per the NYT page above, only 2% of the country has received the full vaccine. That's too little to have such an impact on case rates yet.
I attribute the drop in rates to us getting past the holiday season and all the social non-distancing and travel it traditionally entails. Over Thanksgiving many people I know traveled to visit friends and relatives in their homes, in contravention to all public health rules and recommendations. Unsurprisingly, case rates exploded upward as I showed in one of my blogs. More people traveled for Christmas and/or New Year, too. That created a surge on top of the surge. Now, as fewer people are making excuses to justify travel, the surge is subsiding. Check the NYT charts in the first link above and you'll see we're back to pre-Thanksgiving rates. While that's not great— it's still way higher than over the summer— it's at least a step or two back in the right direction.
