The case for optimism at Covid-19, in 2 graphics

The Covid-19 epidemic in America is still a disaster. The country averages more than 130,000 new cases per day, and deaths are still over 3,000 per day. The vaccine launch is not going as well as anyone would like, and most people still don’t know when they will be able to get the vaccine.

But for the first time during the coverage of the pandemic, I am feeling a little more optimistic this week – for two major reasons.

First, the number of new daily cases of Covid-19 in the United States has dropped dramatically in the past month by an astonishing 45% since the beginning of January.

Second, the pace of vaccinations has continued to increase steadily in recent weeks, quadrupling the number of vaccines per day in one month. The current pace is still not great, nor good, but it is a big step forward.

There are warnings everywhere. The number of cases and deaths by Covid-19 in the USA is still very high; when controlling by population, rates for both are still higher than in most developed countries. The vaccine’s release is still too slow for the pandemic to end in the summer, as many of us want; the current pace puts us on the path to achieving sufficient population protection by 2022. New variants of viruses from the UK, South Africa and Brazil could lead to an increase in infections in the United States and offer an alert for possible future mutations.

“The post-holiday drop is good, as well as the increase in the vaccination rate,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, told me. “The worrying part, however, is that we are still seeing a significant transmission from the community and a little bit in the dark about how truly prevalent the new variants are.”

Things are not going very well, but they are improving. In times of so much despair, it is worth highlighting some of these advances.

1) New daily cases of Covid-19 plummeted in the USA

Here is the first good news: the increase in Covid-19 cases in the holiday season seems – finally – to be decreasing. According to Our World in Data, the US peaked at almost 250,000 cases a day, based on a weekly moving average on January 8. Less than a month later, new daily cases are below 140,000 a day.

This amounts to a drop of about 45% in just a few weeks.

Our world in data

This is probably the result of the country responding collectively to the increase in the holiday season, whether new restrictions imposed by state and local governments in recent months or by the general public, increasing adherence to precautions such as masking and social detachment (especially now that Day Thanksgiving (Christmas and New Year’s Eve are over). Increased immunity to the virus, whether through illness or vaccination, can also play an important role.

The drop in cases is nowhere near to be interpreted as meaning that the sudden increase is over and the United States can now relax. The number of reported cases in America is still above what it was at any time of the pandemic before the fall. The death toll has not yet decreased much, probably because there is a delay between infection, serious illness and death.

Any relaxation now, whether in government restrictions or public adherence, would likely result in another outbreak. There are still a lot of viruses out there, ready to jump from person to person if you get the chance. This is especially true now, as new, more infectious variants of the coronavirus await us putting us at risk of an even greater increase than what we saw during the holiday season, if we slow down.

So I may not be hosting that big Super Bowl party this year.

2) The vaccination campaign is improving

The other good news is that America’s vaccine campaign has accelerated and looks set to continue in the coming weeks and months.

In early January, the United States provided about 300,000 shots a day. Since then, the country has more than quadrupled – with the United States now over 1.3 million shots a day.

Our world in data

There are good reasons to think that this will accelerate in the coming weeks. President Joe Biden’s administration, state and local governments and various parts of the medical system are working to increase vaccine production and distribution. The next vaccine candidates may also make vaccine distribution and administration easier and faster; for example, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which the data suggests is effective, requires only one injection to administer, while the currently approved vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer require two injections given weeks apart.

Still, there are reasons to moderate optimism.

Perhaps most importantly, the current rate of vaccination means that the country will not achieve sufficient population protection or collective immunity – estimated at 70 to 80 percent – by fall, winter or even 2022. And even that depends on whether a vaccine is approved for children, which is not yet certain. If vaccinations do not reach 2 million or 3 million vaccines a day, the United States will not be able to end the summer for Covid-19 that many public officials have promised.

There is also the question of whether vaccines interrupt transmission. At the moment, evidence shows that vaccines prevent serious illness and death, but it is not known whether this translates into preventing the spread of the coronavirus. This does not mean that vaccines no protect against transmission, it means that it is not clear whether they do or not. This can determine how well vaccines work to protect the wider community, above and beyond the person who gets the vaccine.

And we still don’t know how long vaccine protection lasts. It can be months, years or permanent. The situation is complicated by the increase in variants, which may eventually evolve to outperform a vaccine (although this does not seem to be true for current variants). Depending on the response, the United States may require regular coronavirus vaccine campaigns in the future, similar to flu.

All this to say that there is still a lot of work to be done, both in the application of vaccines and in learning the effectiveness of vaccines, before the country can really return to normal.

To put it another way: the fact that we can now see some kind of finish line, between the drop in cases and vaccinations, makes it all the more important that the country stick to masking, social detachment and all the other precautions recommended against Covid -19 – to ensure that more people make it to the finish line alive and well.

But if nothing else, at least the finish line looks a little closer now.

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