Don’t look now but another surge of COVID-19 is coming, and our benevolent overseers want to protect us from the latest variant — even though few of us are getting sick.
The culprit is the dreaded BA.2 variant. It’s related to the omicron variant, but they’re not kissing cousins. BA.2 is more like the uncle who shows up drunk at weddings and makes an embarrassing fool of himself.
If we can survive Uncle Ralph, we can survive the BA.2 variant.
Someone tell public health officials that. The masks are already being deployed to fight the menace in Philadelphia where, beginning Monday, the mask Nazis will renew their reign of terror and make sure you cover up your face.
At the height of the previous omicron surge, reported daily cases reached into the hundreds of thousands. As of Thursday, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose to 39,521, up from 30,724 two weeks earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins collected by The Associated Press.
Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, said the numbers will likely keep growing until the surge reaches about a quarter the height of the last “monstrous” one. BA.2 may well have the same effect in the U.S. as it did in Israel, where it created a “bump” in the chart measuring cases, he said.
Keeping the surge somewhat in check, experts said, is a higher level of immunity in the U.S. from vaccination or past infection compared with early winter.
The positive test numbers are probably a lot higher relative to previous variants, given the widespread availability of home testing. But the only important statistics are serious cases that require hospitalizations and deaths that are the direct result of being infected with COVID-19.
Both experts said BA.2 will move through the country gradually. The Northeast has been hit hardest so far — with more than 90% of new infections caused by BA.2 last week compared with 86% nationally. As of Thursday, the highest rates of new COVID cases per capita over the past 14 days were in Vermont, Rhode Island, Alaska, New York and Massachusetts. In Washington, D.C., which also ranks in the top 10 for rates of new cases, Howard University announced it was moving most undergraduate classes online for the rest of the semester because of “a significant increase in COVID-19 positivity” in the district and on campus.
Some states, such as Rhode Island and New Hampshire, saw the average of daily new cases rise by more than 100% in two weeks, according to Johns Hopkins data.
The number of positive test results means absolutely nothing if the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths aren’t rising in proportion to the increase in positive tests. We don’t know how many of those positive tests were false positives or ended up being asymptomatic.
Related: The Morning Briefing: Confirmed—Blue State Commies Had the Worst COVID Policies
The fact is, the best we can say about this latest round of COVID panic porn is that the public health officials are doing their jobs — they’re being overly cautious, as they’re paid to be. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the pandemic and our response to it, it’s that public health officials grossly exaggerated the risks of serious illness and death.
And they haven’t learned a thing, judging by their reaction to the latest variant.