Analysis: Biden tries once again to suggest victory over the coronavirus
The recent plateau is more obvious if we just look at monthly totals. The most recent Washington Post data ends on Sept. 18, 2022, so the data below looks at the period from the 19th of the prior month to the 18th of the following one, back to the Jan. 19, 2020, to Feb. 18, 2020, period. The most recent period is the second highest of the past five months, generally in line with where things have been since the first surge in omicron cases faded.
If we apply the same monthly periods to the states, we see similar plateaus: the number of population-adjusted deaths over a 30-day period is holding steady rather than declining. Another way to look at it is how the current state of the pandemic compares to the past. If we consider the current population-adjusted death toll with the worst month-long period on record, we see that nearly half of states are seeing deaths at least 10 percent of the state’s peak. In seven states, the number of deaths over the past 31 days has been at least a fifth of the state’s peak since the pandemic began.
This doesn’t look like a disease threat that’s over. It looks like one that’s holding fairly steady in a lot of places.Perhaps deaths will decline as treatments improve and because Americans choose to get another vaccine booster, despite the shrugs of officialdom. But death isn’t the only risk, of course: The illness will result in millions of lost workdays and, for an unlucky portion of those infected,For most Americans this is, indeed, mostly incidental.
Biden’s new effort to push the pandemic into the past may also be recognizing an obvious truth: His ability to shape how people approach the virus has largely reached its limit. He tried to push Americans to close the book on the pandemic in July 2021 and saw his efforts rejected by his political opponents. The calculus now seems to be that if most Americans are going to view the pandemic as something in the past, it behooves him and his party to go with the current rather than against it.
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