Here is a screenshot of the Johns Hopkins dashboard, taken this evening:
It's grim enough that the US continues to report cases and deaths that would have been unthinkable two years ago: over 75 million cases, a quarter of them in the last 28 days, and almost 900,000 deaths, with 57,000 of them in the same 28 days. Yet it's as if the Americans scarcely notice.
Pay attention to the charts on the right. The omicron spike seems to be coming down, from 23.277 million in epi-week 3 to 23.07 million in epi-week 4. If cases fall as sharply as they rose, by the end of February we'll have seen roughly 160 million cases in the first two months alone of 2022.
Meanwhile, deaths have risen despite omicron's famous mildness: a rapid climb from 45,000 in epi-week 1 to 65,000 in epi-week 4, for a total of about 338,000 deaths in 4 weeks.
As for vaccinations, the numbers are huge but dropping: epi-week 1 saw 242 million, but they're down to a bit below 167 million in epi-week 4.
It's nice to think case counts and deaths will continue to fall indefinitely, while vaccinations soar again. But other variants will follow omicron, and some of them could be even nastier. If you think you're tired now, imagine was February 1, 2023 could be like.
