Only 2% of the population is vaccinated, and Winter was supposed to keep Covid-19 at fever pitch from indoor transmissions. Peoples' behavior hasn't changed much. Did they just mobilize all testing to vaccinations instead?

  • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Christmas isn't the only holiday. November and December are always going to be the worst times for transmission of flu.

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Even before that though, like October, you can still see a growth.

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah, that was the baseline growth, you can see 3 distinct bumps that seem to line up with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas though

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          But that's the point. If nothing changed compared to before the holidays, then there should still be a baseline growth, but there isn't.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            See how it spikes then plateaus? If we reach another plateau, that's bad. If it keeps going down that's good. It seems to stabilize around the previous peak

            • Pezevenk [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              As I said before, the infection rates of epidemics don't tend to stabilise. Excluding really big short term events, they tend to follow an exponential evolution within the available hosts, according to the R value which is variable and represents how many people each infected person spreads the disease to. If R is above 1, rates increase. If it is below 1, they decrease. Brief events that spread the virus to many people who wouldn't normally go on to spread the virus can give sudden spikes which then fall down again, but otherwise if R falls below 1 for some time, it is probably because something different is happening than before. When it "plateaus" it is because R is very close to 1. It seems like R has actually dropped which either means something changed in the behavior of people compared to before, or something else has changed. So I think for now it is getting better. When the mutations really start picking up then they're gonna rise again but for now it's on a good course.