Covid Cases Keep Falling

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/briefing/covid-cases-falling-delta.html

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It is time for one of The Morning’s occasional updates on the state of the pandemic. Today’s is focused on the U.S. and organized around three main points.

The number of new daily Covid-19 cases has plunged 57 percent since peaking on Sept. 1. Almost as encouraging as the magnitude of the decline is its breadth: Cases have been declining in every region.

Forecasting Covid’s future is extremely difficult, as we all should know by now, and it’s certainly possible that cases will rise again in the coming weeks. But the geographic breadth of the decline does offer reason for optimism.

Past Covid increases have generally started in one part of the country — like the South this past summer or the New York region in early 2020 — and then gone national. Today, there is no regional surge that seems to have the makings of a nationwide surge.

Yes, there are some local hot spots, as has almost always been the case since the pandemic began. (You can look up your county.) Several of the hot spots are in northern parts of the country, like Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and a few counties near the Canadian border in New Hampshire and Vermont. This pattern has led to some speculation that the onset of cold weather is causing the increases by moving more activity indoors — and that the entire country will soon experience a rise in caseloads.

That does not seem to be the most likely scenario, however. In most colder regions, including both Canada and the densely populated parts of the northern U.S., cases are still falling. The biggest problem for Alaska and the Mountain West is probably not the weather; it’s the vaccine skepticism. Idaho is the nation’s least vaccinated state, and several other Western states are only slightly ahead of it.

The C.D.C. tracks a range of Covid forecasting models. On average, the models predict that new daily cases in the U.S. will fall roughly another 20 percent over the next three weeks.

The bottom line: There is no reason to expect another Covid surge anytime soon, but surges don’t always announce themselves in advance.

When the Delta variant began spreading this summer, many people worried that it was both much more contagious than earlier versions of the virus and much more severe. Only one of those two fears seems to be true.

Delta is clearly more contagious, which is the main reason that every metric of the pandemic — cases, hospitalizations and deaths — soared this summer. But a typical Covid case during the Delta wave was about as severe as a typical case during the earlier stages of the pandemic. During the wave in late 2020 and early this year, about 1.2 percent of positive cases led to death; during the Delta wave, the share was 1.1 percent.

Scientific studies trying to answer the severity question more precisely have come to conflicting conclusions. Some have found Delta to be more severe than other versions of the virus, and others have found that it is not. Until the research becomes clearer, the best guess may be that Delta is modestly more severe, which could explain why hospitalizations and death rates have held steady even as vaccination rates have risen.

“Delta may be a little more serious, but not materially so,” Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told me.

This pattern can influence how you think about your day-to-day activities. If you are vaccinated (and boosted, if eligible) and you were comfortable socializing indoors and without a mask last spring, you can probably feel comfortable doing so again, now or soon. Wachter adds: “Some older people or those with medical conditions may want to be sure that everybody else indoors with them is vaccinated before removing their mask.”

Despite all the encouraging news, one shadow still hangs over the U.S.: The pandemic does not need to be nearly as bad it is.

About 1,500 Americans have died of Covid every day over the past week. For older age groups, the virus remains a leading cause of death. And the main reason is that millions of Americans have chosen to remain unvaccinated. Many of them are older and have underlying medical conditions, leaving them vulnerable to severe versions of Covid.

For older people, the effects of vaccination are profound. In late August, near the height of the Delta wave, 24 out of every 10,000 unvaccinated Americans 65 and above were hospitalized with Covid symptoms, according to the C.D.C. Among fully vaccinated Americans 65 and above, the number was 1.5 per 10,000.

Even so, many Americans are saying no to a shot. Among affluent countries, the U.S. is one of the least vaccinated, trailing Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and others. Less vaccination means more death:

(These Times maps show the vaccination rates for each country.)

The low vaccination rate in the U.S. is another consequence of our polarized politics and our high levels of socioeconomic inequality. Only 67 percent of American adults without a four-year college degree have received a shot, compared with 82 percent of college graduates, according to the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll. And only 58 percent of self-identified Republicans are vaccinated, compared with 90 percent of Democrats.

It’s a triumph of misinformation. Offered a lifesaving drug to counteract a highly contagious virus, many Americans are instead choosing to take their chances.

Democrats are coalescing around a version of President Biden’s domestic agenda that includes monthly payments for families, clean energy tax breaks and universal pre-K.

Rising prices have become a political problem for the White House.

The U.S. is one of six countries without national paid leave. Many places offer at least 12 weeks. The Democrats’ family-policy plan would create four weeks.

Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistle-blower, called on British lawmakers to regulate the company: “Until the incentives change, Facebook will not change.”

Facebook said its quarterly profits rose 17 percent to $9.2 billion over the past year.

Likes and shares define Facebook, but the company is struggling to deal with their effects, documents show.

Sudan’s military seized power and opened fire on protesters.

A Hong Kong court convicted an activist of inciting secession for shouting pro-independence slogans.

Princess Mako of Japan got married at a registry office in Tokyo. It was still romantic.

Illinois authorities identified another victim of John Wayne Gacy, who murdered dozens of young men in the 1970s.

Hertz ordered 100,000 Teslas, driving the car company’s value above $1 trillion.

A shooting at a mall in Boise, Idaho, left two people dead and five injured.

There’s little evidence suggesting Kyle Rittenhouse was an extremist. What brought him to the streets of Kenosha, Wis., equipped for war?

“For the same reason pediatricians recommend seatbelts and car seats, we are recommending vaccines for Covid-19,” Dr. Lee Savio Beers writes in The Times.

Taxing the rich to fund child benefits is the American thing to do, Paul Krugman argues.

Promised Land: Two Times journalists drove the length of Israel to see how its factions fit together.

Turkey Day: Thanksgiving dinner will cost more this year.

Blobs: When worms move in clusters, it’s “pretty shocking, but also kind of beautiful.”

Ask: David Sedaris knows what you laugh at when no one’s looking.

Lives Lived: Paul Salata had a soft spot for underdogs, and in the 1970s it compelled him to pitch an idea to the N.F.L.: “Mr. Irrelevant,” an irreverent celebration of the last player picked in the draft, which continues to this day. Salata died at 94.

If you have a child, you’ve probably heard of Roblox, an online platform populated by colorful, blocky characters and full of games. Roblox has more than 43 million daily users, many of them between 9 and 12. As it looks to expand, the site is trying to balance attracting an older audience with maintaining a safe environment for its younger users, Kellen Browning reports.

Dave Baszucki, the company’s chief executive, who has a background in educational software, said mixing various ages on the platform was “a challenge.” There have been recreations of mass shootings, games depicting virtual strip clubs and recruitment efforts by extremist groups.

But Roblox has been more active than many tech companies in trying to build a safe world online. It reviews game content, offers parental controls and profanity-blocking filters, and has banned depictions of romance or discussion of political parties. These efforts, Kellen writes, can be instructive for other internet outfits, like Facebook, that hope to attract a younger audience. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

In this sheet-pan meal, roast chicken alongside pears.

What keeps fans coming back to sequels of the 1978 scary movie “Halloween”?

Kwon Yeo-sun’s “Lemon,” which shows a murder from three perspectives, is “a bright, intense, refreshing” story you can finish in one sitting, Oyinkan Braithwaite writes.

The hosts talked about Jan. 6.

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was intimacy. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Wall painting (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Sui-Lee Wee, who wrote The Times’s first article about Covid-19, will be our next Southeast Asia bureau chief.

Here’s today’s print front page.

“The Daily” is about the Democrats’ spending bill.

Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.