It’s been a bit over three weeks since Inauguration Day in the US (20 Jan 2021). After peaking at ~300,000 cases a couple of days after the well-known events at the Capitol Hill, COVID-19 cases have now been steadily decreasing to under 100, 000…
cases per day in the past few days; unfortunately deaths are quickly heading towards the ½ million milestone. Cases are also on the decrease globally (to under half a million per day), due to the restrictions, many of which are still in place in Europe and Asia. There are many success stories to share from around the world, but here I’ll just mention the great job done by Ireland. Ireland had a rapid spike in cases in early January peaking at average of over 6,000 cases per day; following a strict lockdown cases are now hovering at around 1,000 per day. This, once again, highlights the importance of minimising movement and of social distancing in reducing the spread of the virus.
Back to the US, it was always known that the new administration would have a more enthusiastic approach at tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. The message about the importance of social distancing and masking is much more clear, and part from cases dropping – the exact cause for the reduction in cases is not entirely clear – there are couple interesting observations.
- “Liberation” of the experts – for example, Dr Fauci is hanging around again; he is more visible and saying extra things. (Of course, he has [correctly], been made chief medical advisor to the President and Head of delegation to the World Health Organisation).
- Vaccine acquisition and distribution remains an important issue; currently approximately 10% of the US population has received one dose (of the two dose Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines), and 3% of the population has been fully vaccinated. Although the vaccine was produced in record time, this is slow relative to expectations.
With respect to vaccination, even though the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are less effective than the mRMA-based vaccines, they will provide an important boost as we race towards herd immunity. It is a race because as we spoke about in the previous issue, the virus is mutating and we don’t want to wait around for highly contagious variants that can escape immunization. [Already it looks like the AstraZeneca vaccine may not be as effective against the “South African” strain]. Hopefully, we will prevail.
Until next time … Tranquilo Polymaths.