Good Grief — Two Million U.S. COVID-19 Cases in Less Than Four days

COVID- 19 is not only not done with us, but it is also like a dog fiercely attacking a squishy toy  — it keeps growling and won’t let go of us. Today COVID topped 405,000 new cases in a single day. At no time during the entire pandemic has the U.S. seen a daily caseload that high.

The numbers of this fast-moving virus are staggering. The U.S. has gone from reaching the 53 million mark for COVID cases just four days ago — to topping 55 million new cases today. At the current rate, we could reach 56 million by Wednesday morning.

The virus infects within 24 to 48 hours. More than 9o percent of the cases are of the highly infectious, fast-moving Omicron variant and 98 percent of the cases being hospitalized are unvaccinated people. In Colorado, the cases are literally all Omicron.

Here in Chaffee County, not entirely surprisingly, cases are beginning to explode. There have been 96 cases in the past seven days, and 136 cases in the past 14 days. The county’s positivity rate went from 2.2 percent to 7.07 percent in the space of a few days. Just today 46 tests have come back positive and the surge shows no end in sight.

While the virus does not yet appear to be more dangerous than prior strains, it is incredibly infectious and it transmits in only a day or two, as opposed to the previous eight to 10-day incubation.

All of those means that a surge could quickly overwhelm the healthcare system with unvaccinated people who contract the variant. It could also force business and school shutdowns, without enough personnel to staff buildings and maintain student-staff ratios.

This morning the Food and Drug Administration cleared the COVID booster shots for kids ages 12 to 15-years-old. The move comes none-too-soon as kids head back to school after the holiday break.

That the virus continues to mutate, and the cases are again growing should come as no surprise. Despite effective vaccines developed in a miraculous short time by dedicated scientists, we have never reached anything approaching herd immunity against COVID-19, thanks to those who decided they were more important than the community of “all of us.”