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In late October, COVID arrival rates started trending sharply upward pretty much nationwide, peaking exponentially in first one location and then another. Because of the regional nature of coronavirus behavior the pattern is not as clear as it could be when looking at national data, but even there you can see it. When you look at individual states (e.g., Minnesota) the graph hits an inflection point and transforms into an upward parabola (October 26 in our case) reaching a screaming peak about a month later. This seems to be a pretty typical pattern.
The "explanations" coming from public health experts have been laughable. It's because of colder weather (how does that explain El Paso? Or LA?). It's because of people misbehaving over Thanksgiving (the entire upper Midwest reached its peak a week before Thanksgiving and has been in sharp decline since). It's people not wearing masks (Minnesota followed the same pattern as the Dakotas). It's "pandemic fatigue" (weak). How about this? There's a new variant of the coronavirus that is much more contagious than the original and it's been in community spread in the US for the past 2-3 months.
Oh, no, can't be that, you say. That variant was only discovered in the US about 10 days ago and there are still just a handful of cases. HA, I say. HA! HA! HA! You can't find the variant unless you are looking for it. And even then you won't see it unless you have the data. Well guess what. According to this report from NBC, "the U.S. has sequenced only about 60,000 samples, or 0.3 percent of all cases, according to the nonprofit GISAID Initiative, one of the few international databases that houses the genetic information for more than 300,000 virus samples around the world. The U.S.'s number is strikingly low compared to the numbers in other countries"
Oh, but it gets worse. Guess how long it takes for our pathetically few samples to get uploaded into that GSAID database? 85 days. ALMOST 3 MONTHS. (This puts the US 61st in the world, below Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, if you're feeling competitive). And how long has it been since we started seeing massive unexplained spikes in COVID cases at multiple locations throughout the US? Gosh, look at that. 2-1/2 months.
I haven't seen any articles that explicitly tie these two things together yet, but it sure looks like a smoking gun to me. What do you think? Am I missing something here?
The "explanations" coming from public health experts have been laughable. It's because of colder weather (how does that explain El Paso? Or LA?). It's because of people misbehaving over Thanksgiving (the entire upper Midwest reached its peak a week before Thanksgiving and has been in sharp decline since). It's people not wearing masks (Minnesota followed the same pattern as the Dakotas). It's "pandemic fatigue" (weak). How about this? There's a new variant of the coronavirus that is much more contagious than the original and it's been in community spread in the US for the past 2-3 months.
Oh, no, can't be that, you say. That variant was only discovered in the US about 10 days ago and there are still just a handful of cases. HA, I say. HA! HA! HA! You can't find the variant unless you are looking for it. And even then you won't see it unless you have the data. Well guess what. According to this report from NBC, "the U.S. has sequenced only about 60,000 samples, or 0.3 percent of all cases, according to the nonprofit GISAID Initiative, one of the few international databases that houses the genetic information for more than 300,000 virus samples around the world. The U.S.'s number is strikingly low compared to the numbers in other countries"
Oh, but it gets worse. Guess how long it takes for our pathetically few samples to get uploaded into that GSAID database? 85 days. ALMOST 3 MONTHS. (This puts the US 61st in the world, below Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, if you're feeling competitive). And how long has it been since we started seeing massive unexplained spikes in COVID cases at multiple locations throughout the US? Gosh, look at that. 2-1/2 months.
I haven't seen any articles that explicitly tie these two things together yet, but it sure looks like a smoking gun to me. What do you think? Am I missing something here?
