Maggie's Farm

I don't know about variants, but some American states are badly in a third spike already - LA, AK, MS, OK, FL, AL, and about 20 others are showing a moderate spike. I don't think the whole country will experience a third spike, because there have been enough vaccinations. At a minimum, the number of deaths should be fewer because hospitals know more about treatment.

I don't know about conservatives in general, but the ones online have become obsessed with pretending that there is no danger and never was, and that some comparable number of people have died from the responses to the virus. What people want to be true has nothing to do with what is true. That used to be why people became conservative in the first place.

I started by saying these numbers are there, variant or not. I'm not so much interested why at this point, as that may not be clear. Variant or re-emergence in low-vaccination areas? Dunno.

You can go to worldometers and look at it for yourself. I'm not quoting anyone, so don't throw that "not trusting experts" thing at me. The numbers are right there. The graphs are right there, just click through and scroll. When I link the spam filter kicks me out here, but just go and look at what is happening in Louisiana. Those are deaths, lots of 'em in a short time. The other states, mostly a large increase in cases, comparable to last summer, and some clear increase in deaths over the last couple of weeks.

Most states are not seeing this. Some are.

I don't like to kick people who are trying to sort through the conflicting information, but please do not fall for those claims that because the testing doesn't really pick up the variants - yet, the whole thing should be discarded. For example, every day Instapundit is running some link about another claim the response might have caused more death than the disease. This is flat insane, and undermines everything else he or his commenters say about the illness. If they can't get that there are 750,000 deaths with nothing comparable from the response (the increase in ODs is 3% of that total, and that's the biggest one by far), they can't be trusted with anything else.

Sorry to rant. People (not saying it's you) are scrambling for excuses to not believe in death. I get exercised. Don't believe them.

Active cases in Louisiana are higher than at any time in the pandemic. New cases in FL are higher than at any time in the pandemic. Plenty of other states seem fine.

Sorry, anecdote. Not data. You noted it yourself, and your caution was the more important point than what you said after. Other people involved with the situation might describe it differently and there is no standardisation. I have a career of people giving me social histories and explanations that turned out to be not quite the correct story. You may be right, but I have no reason to accept this an an addition to covid discussion. It always sounds heartless to tell people that, because it feels as if you are denying their pain, tragedy, and what they are just sure is reality. If this pattern is real it eventually shows up in the data.