I’m pretty sure I’d bet 99% that the answer here is yes. The fact that this doesn’t seem obvious to others makes a little hesitant though. Am I missing something?
Reasoning: The US is about 4 times larger than the UK. The UK has more vaccinations than the US, and, most importantly, fewer low-vaccination regions where cases among the vaccinated might truly skyrocket. The UK has nearly 50,000 daily cases already, and that’s before reopening (and there are regions in the US with fewer restrictions presently). (And the UK will probably hit 200,000 cases and beyond.) The US is behind in the Delta variant timeline, but even a best-case scenario would get over 100,000 cases. Everything else would look like a miracle, especially given (very justified) restriction fatigue.
That’s the only argument in your list that I find interesting. However, there’s not enough time to vaccinate enough children to curb the spread sufficiently. Also, I doubt most states are doing this. Maybe they’re just vaccinating children with comorbidities?
One thing going against that is that the UK has focused on single-shot vaccination while the US has had much more double-shot vaccination, which seems to have an impact on the delta variant.
That’s a good point. However, last time I checked, the UK was slightly ahead even on only counting the percentage of doubly-vaccinated people. (Also, it’s possible that single-vaccinated people are substantially less infectious conditional on getting infected, which means that the UK strategy of focusing on first doses could actually be superior. I don’t know if this applies, but it’s not obviously wrong to me.)
You could also point out that UK had more Astra Zeneca vaccinations, which are a bit less effective. That’s true but it just seems intuitively extremely implausible that the effect would be large enough. 100k cases is too low of a bar to make this question interesting. It would be somewhat interesting for 200k cases.
The US had 35k new reported cases yesterday[0], so we’d have to have a spike of 3x the current numbers. That’s not impossible (the rate two weeks ago was a third of the current rate!), but it doesn’t seem 99% certain to me, especially as the percent vaccinated continues to go up, albeit at a slower rate.
The last time the US hit 100k was at the beginning of February, five months ago, when it was a lot less vaccinated, and the peak of the spike in April was 85k (with a 7-day average of 73k), so we’d have to have a worse spike than in April with higher vaccination rates.
The elephant in the room is of course the delta variant, but having a confidence of 99% seems to be overstating it in my opinion.
The best argument I can come up with against >100k cases:
Cases will skyrocket in different US regions at different times. They will skyrocket especially in places with lots of unvaccinated people, which will lead to spikes in deaths, which will lead to lockdowns. Those lockdowns will keep the case numbers down. The main reason why the UK sees high case numbers is because the government doesn’t think it’s a big deal as long as few people are dying. (I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad way to look at it, given the economic costs of tighter restrictions.)
Even that story^ feels extremely implausible to me. I just don’t see governors of Southern states going into lockdowns when deaths start to spike again, especially because they won’t spike as much as they used to.
I’m not completely closing the door on 98%, but I think it’s more likely than not that I’d put 99% after a full day of serious thinking. As it is, if I had to bet on this right now without more thinking, I’d go with 98% while feeling a bit cowardly.
I’m pretty sure I’d bet 99% that the answer here is yes. The fact that this doesn’t seem obvious to others makes a little hesitant though. Am I missing something?
Reasoning: The US is about 4 times larger than the UK. The UK has more vaccinations than the US, and, most importantly, fewer low-vaccination regions where cases among the vaccinated might truly skyrocket. The UK has nearly 50,000 daily cases already, and that’s before reopening (and there are regions in the US with fewer restrictions presently). (And the UK will probably hit 200,000 cases and beyond.) The US is behind in the Delta variant timeline, but even a best-case scenario would get over 100,000 cases. Everything else would look like a miracle, especially given (very justified) restriction fatigue.
That’s the only argument in your list that I find interesting. However, there’s not enough time to vaccinate enough children to curb the spread sufficiently. Also, I doubt most states are doing this. Maybe they’re just vaccinating children with comorbidities?
One thing going against that is that the UK has focused on single-shot vaccination while the US has had much more double-shot vaccination, which seems to have an impact on the delta variant.
That’s a good point. However, last time I checked, the UK was slightly ahead even on only counting the percentage of doubly-vaccinated people. (Also, it’s possible that single-vaccinated people are substantially less infectious conditional on getting infected, which means that the UK strategy of focusing on first doses could actually be superior. I don’t know if this applies, but it’s not obviously wrong to me.)
You could also point out that UK had more Astra Zeneca vaccinations, which are a bit less effective. That’s true but it just seems intuitively extremely implausible that the effect would be large enough. 100k cases is too low of a bar to make this question interesting. It would be somewhat interesting for 200k cases.
You can actually bet on it: https://polymarket.com/market/will-the-us-have-more-than-100000-new-daily-covid-19-cases-before-january-1
The US had 35k new reported cases yesterday[0], so we’d have to have a spike of 3x the current numbers. That’s not impossible (the rate two weeks ago was a third of the current rate!), but it doesn’t seem 99% certain to me, especially as the percent vaccinated continues to go up, albeit at a slower rate.
The last time the US hit 100k was at the beginning of February, five months ago, when it was a lot less vaccinated, and the peak of the spike in April was 85k (with a 7-day average of 73k), so we’d have to have a worse spike than in April with higher vaccination rates.
The elephant in the room is of course the delta variant, but having a confidence of 99% seems to be overstating it in my opinion.
[0]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
The best argument I can come up with against >100k cases:
Cases will skyrocket in different US regions at different times. They will skyrocket especially in places with lots of unvaccinated people, which will lead to spikes in deaths, which will lead to lockdowns. Those lockdowns will keep the case numbers down. The main reason why the UK sees high case numbers is because the government doesn’t think it’s a big deal as long as few people are dying. (I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad way to look at it, given the economic costs of tighter restrictions.)
Even that story^ feels extremely implausible to me. I just don’t see governors of Southern states going into lockdowns when deaths start to spike again, especially because they won’t spike as much as they used to.
I’m not completely closing the door on 98%, but I think it’s more likely than not that I’d put 99% after a full day of serious thinking. As it is, if I had to bet on this right now without more thinking, I’d go with 98% while feeling a bit cowardly.