The Delta variant, which was first reported in India, is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, the report said.
. . . Meanwhile, a new CDC study published on Friday showed that three-quarters of individuals who became infected with COVID-19 at public events in a Massachusetts county had been fully vaccinated, suggesting the Delta variant of the virus is highly contagious.
Not only is it very contagious, but it is also causing breakthrough cases.
The speed through which this virus can whip through the population has some like Dr. Scott Gottlieb believing that the current spike in US cases could be finished in a matter of weeks, because we're seriously undercounting infections in this country.
CNBC (Jul 30):
“I wouldn’t be surprised if, on the whole, we’re infecting up to a million people a day right now, and we’re just picking up maybe a 10th of that or less than a 10th of that,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said in an interview on “Squawk Box.”
. . . The current seven-day average of new daily coronavirus cases in the U.S. is roughly 67,000, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.
. . . On Friday, Gottlieb reiterated his view that the U.S. is much further into the surge of delta-driven infections than others believe. “This delta wave will pass, probably at some point in September,” he predicted.
The above target of September appears to be a more conservative take than what he said on Face the Nation (Jul 25) a few days earlier:
If you look at the U.K. right now, and we're probably about three weeks, maybe four weeks behind the U.K., perhaps a little less than that. If you look at the U.K., they do in the last seven days appear to be turning a corner. You're starting to see a downward trajectory on the cases. Now, it's unclear whether that's going to be sustained. They just lifted a lot of the mitigation that they had in place. But if the UK is any guide, we are perhaps further into this epidemic and hopefully going to turn a corner in the next two or maybe three weeks.
On Face the Nation he appears to be targeting late August while on CNBC he is shifting to sometime in September -- let's just say the middle of September.
He is basing his analysis on the UK. As Worldometer indicates, we did see a rapid spike up and then what appears to have been the start of a rapid spike down; however, it seems to me like the spike down might actually be plateauing at a rate that is still much higher than the lows. He does admit his analysis might be flawed. As he notes, the UK "lifted a lot of the mitigation that they had in place." He said that on Face the Nation. Perhaps after seeing the more recent UK data, he shifted the goal posts from late August to sometime in September.
Worldometer also shows that India saw a similar spike up and spike down when it comes to the delta variant. I would expect that Gottlieb is also taking that into account. Of course, when it comes to India, they might very well see another spike in cases. Zerohedge (Jul 27) reported:
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has released the results of its fourth seroprevalence study which was conducted across 21 states in June and July with 36,227 people participating, including 7,252 healthcare workers. It found that 67.6 percent of people over six years of age, some two-thirds of India's population, have Sars-CoV-2 antibodies.
However, as Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, despite that high percentage, at least 400 million people across the country remain at risk of infection and officials warned against relaxing Covid-19 protocols.
According to OurWorldinData, India has only 7.4% of their population that is fully vaccinated, which is really really low. This might explain why India's southern state of Kerala recently implemented a two-day lockdown.
CNBC (Jul 30):
“I wouldn’t be surprised if, on the whole, we’re infecting up to a million people a day right now, and we’re just picking up maybe a 10th of that or less than a 10th of that,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said in an interview on “Squawk Box.”
. . . The current seven-day average of new daily coronavirus cases in the U.S. is roughly 67,000, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.
. . . On Friday, Gottlieb reiterated his view that the U.S. is much further into the surge of delta-driven infections than others believe. “This delta wave will pass, probably at some point in September,” he predicted.
The above target of September appears to be a more conservative take than what he said on Face the Nation (Jul 25) a few days earlier:
If you look at the U.K. right now, and we're probably about three weeks, maybe four weeks behind the U.K., perhaps a little less than that. If you look at the U.K., they do in the last seven days appear to be turning a corner. You're starting to see a downward trajectory on the cases. Now, it's unclear whether that's going to be sustained. They just lifted a lot of the mitigation that they had in place. But if the UK is any guide, we are perhaps further into this epidemic and hopefully going to turn a corner in the next two or maybe three weeks.
On Face the Nation he appears to be targeting late August while on CNBC he is shifting to sometime in September -- let's just say the middle of September.
He is basing his analysis on the UK. As Worldometer indicates, we did see a rapid spike up and then what appears to have been the start of a rapid spike down; however, it seems to me like the spike down might actually be plateauing at a rate that is still much higher than the lows. He does admit his analysis might be flawed. As he notes, the UK "lifted a lot of the mitigation that they had in place." He said that on Face the Nation. Perhaps after seeing the more recent UK data, he shifted the goal posts from late August to sometime in September.
Worldometer also shows that India saw a similar spike up and spike down when it comes to the delta variant. I would expect that Gottlieb is also taking that into account. Of course, when it comes to India, they might very well see another spike in cases. Zerohedge (Jul 27) reported:
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has released the results of its fourth seroprevalence study which was conducted across 21 states in June and July with 36,227 people participating, including 7,252 healthcare workers. It found that 67.6 percent of people over six years of age, some two-thirds of India's population, have Sars-CoV-2 antibodies.
However, as Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, despite that high percentage, at least 400 million people across the country remain at risk of infection and officials warned against relaxing Covid-19 protocols.
According to OurWorldinData, India has only 7.4% of their population that is fully vaccinated, which is really really low. This might explain why India's southern state of Kerala recently implemented a two-day lockdown.
I do hope that Gottlieb is right, but that brings up another question in my mind: isn't it already too late for people in America to get vaccinated in order to avoid this wave of infections? The Pfizer vaccine takes 5 weeks to get fully vaccinated. Moderna's takes 6 weeks. As for J&J, I don't think that one is as effective. Essentially, by the time one is vaccinated (even if it happens right now), this wave will have passed. To me, if an unvaccinated person wants to avoid getting the virus, they better be really careful over the next 6 weeks.
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