Cold Covid - part the ninth

Regular visitor may well recall the mention here, a number of times, that case count, while important, what matters in terms of 'bending the curve' (the goal that brought masks, distancing, and hand sanitizing) is tracking hospitalizations. The goal is to keep hospitals viable. Just today (dead trees version) we get an op-ed piece making just that point. Referring to the NYT state pages, hospitalizations have tracked cases nearly exactly in the cold states this fall. But this is Covid-δ. The notion is that Covid-ο, being milder (so far, and we hope) and more home testing, may well be undercounted at the case level; mild/asymps either never test or do so at home. Makes sense. IOW, don't get cocky if the USofA doesn't record the two to three day doubling that's been going on in the UK. It's early days, as the saying goes, on this side of The Pond. And on The Other Side of The Pond, they take testing seriously.

One hopes that Covid-ο does to Covid-δ what that did to Covid-β. If Constant Power^© holds true, we're on the way to Covid-XX being not much different from seasonal flu. But, keep in mind that Covid-XX is a coronavirus, just like about half of the source of the common cold, mutating like a pole dancer in a $2 strip club. While Covid-β fell to Covid-δ, there's not a shred of guarantee that the next virulent strain will be closely (enough) followed by a hyper-transmissible and milder strain. What we can be reasonably sure of: should a β-like (or worse) variant emerge, it's nearly guaranteed to be localized both in time and space; the lesson of SARS and MERS. And that space is nearly guaranteed to be Stupid States that don't vaccinate. Win-win.