Epi Weekly Review: No Fairy-Tale Ending to The Covid Pandemic

Less testing, less information on tests, apparently less Covid. Positivity decreased 5.2 to 4.8% per CovidView. Testing decreased for multiple reasons, including antigen test results not being reliably tracked.
1/6

In the past week, most diagnosed cases in TX, CA, FL, IL, GA, MO, WI; these 6 states account for nearly half of diagnosed cases. But diagnosed cases only roughly a fifth of total infections. Virus spreading on campuses will spread to homes, parents, grandparents, and others.
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3/6 @nytimes tracks counties with the highest rates. Here are top 28. They look pretty....red...to me. The virus doesn’t see red or blue states, only people it can infect. In too many places, the virus is still winning. If we work together but stay apart, we can stop the spread.

In most of the US, we continue to not do case investigation and contact tracing well. Too many cases to trace in some places. Too few cases reached quickly. Too few contacts named. Contacts not quarantining. These are all hard problems to solve - but they are all solvable.
4/6

Companies published protocols for vaccine studies; now we await rigorous external review. CDC cleaned some amateur, harmful, politically-directed material off their website; now to see if they regain scientific independence. We hope for a safe, effective vaccine we can trust.
5/6

6/6 Thanks @profdalefisher for the phrase: vaccine won’t bring a fairy-tale end to the pandemic. Even with a vaccine, we will need a comprehensive response to reduce spread (closures, adaptations, 3W's), find it fast (test), stop it soon (isolation, contact tracing, quarantine).