RINGING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH A NEW COVID19 VARIANT

Because 2020 wasn’t bad enough

I know I’m kind of preaching to the same choir at this point, but I think this is important enough to explain. The UK COVID19 variant B.1.1.7. is in the U.S. and is spreading. The chart below shows what happened in the UK and Ireland when this new variant dominated during their latest surge.

They beat back their fall surges very effectively (see Sept and Nov bump and drop on chart) unlike the U.S., where we failed barely managed to plateau at a ridiculously high level of community spread.

Absent drastic state and federal level action, I expect the impact of this new variant to be catastrophic in the United States, as our cases per million number goes vertical like the UK and Ireland.

Be careful out there.

The pandemic is far from over.