Covid-2019

We were afraid that as the US Delta-wave progressed, deaths would catch up to infections and the case-fatality ratio would rise. But from all-time lows, after a couple weeks of almost imperceptibly rising, it is falling again now. Is Delta less lethal? Are the vaccines acting as therapeutics that help in the worst cases? Are we just getting better at treatment? No way to know, but the news is encouraging (especially now that infections seem to be rolling over, too).

Now it's official: the Delta case-wave is cresting. The proof: politicized over-reaction (it always comes right at the top). Today 80% of US adults are either vaccinated or recovered from previous infections. Yet yesterday our president joined the ignoble roster of over-reactors with divisive mandates and angry rhetoric aimed at the remaining vaccine-hesitant minority, a group defined in reality along racial lines as much as any other. He says the scientists approve of boosters, but at the same time he says they haven't approved them. The word "I" is used 33 times, "me" 7 times and "my" 15 times. The government's failed response to Covid is now a multi-administration bipartisan affair. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Our most reliable (but lagging) indicator, days-to-double-mortalities, not confirms that case growth in Florida has been exponential. But leading indicators, such as two-week case trajectory, have rolled over for Florida as they have for 11 states; two-week cases positivity has rolled over too, as it has for 32 states. The Delta variant wave now appears clearly to be cresting.

"Recommended Reading" -- a new book has been published on the origins of Covid, questioning Anthony Fauci's reauthorizing gain-of-function research at Wuhan in 2017. It's published by a very mainstream and proper publisher, Harper Collins, and excerpted in the very mainstream and proper Times of London. Political energies make it almost impossible to consider the matter without bias, but why? He has served many presidents of both parties, and his questionable actions took place when Trump was president. Odd that conservatives are quick to hang him, while liberals reflexively defend him. The truth is out there somewhere, regardless of the politics of any particular truth-seeker.