My Virtual Reading Room

Tracking coronavirus infections in the US, from The National Geographic

What the current spike in Covid-19 cases could say about the coronavirus’ future, from StatNews

As the Omicron wave subsided in the United States earlier this year, many experts anticipated a sort of reprieve. We certainly weren’t done with Covid, but perhaps we would get a well-deserved rest.

That break seems to be over.

An increase in infections that began in places including the Northeast and Puerto Rico is now being seen in other parts of the country. Cases will rise and fall going forward, but more worryingly, hospitalizations have started to increase as well — up 20% over two weeks. The decline in deaths has bottomed out at some 350 a day....

The ‘five pandemics’ driving 1 million U.S. Covid deaths, also from StatNews

...Analysis of the data will continue for years, but it is clear that, when it comes to deadliness, there were five different pandemics — depending on when and where you lived, and who you were.

Earlier vs. later
Older vs. younger (but there’s fine print)
Unvaccinated vs. vaccinated
Rural vs. urban
Poorer vs. wealthier
...
America Is Starting to See What COVID Immunity Really Looks Like, from The Atlantic

With time and effort, we can build enough protection to blunt surges—but herd immunity remains out of reach.

...Roughly 60 percent of people in the U.S. have caught SARS-CoV-2, according to the latest CDC estimates, which go through February of this year.

And that’s very possibly a serious underestimate. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a global health-research center at the University of Washington, puts the tally higher, at 76 percent, as of the beginning of April. And Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at Yale’s School of Public Health, who’s been modeling infections and vaccinations among Americans, told me the true number might even exceed 80 percent.

No matter how you calculate it, though, the proportion of Americans who have been infected dwarfs the fraction who are up-to-date on their vaccines.