I had assumed they really ramped up testing in RI as well, but it doesn't appear so. They have a nice google sheet you can see all this information if you scroll all the way down on their dashboard and play around with:
Between Dec 1 2020 and Jan 24 2021 RI did 858,003 tests. Between Dec 1 2021 and Jan 24 2022 they did 1,070,239.
Sure, it's a 25% increase, but I had expected a 100% increase based on these trends.
May be there is a 4th or 5th possibility too.
#4 - Leaky vaccine theory. It's the type of idea which we are not supposed to talk about, but like the lab leak theory, the more time goes on it feels harder to dismiss. This theory would explain a) why the virus came back more transmissible than ever and b) why it is less lethal. Critics of this theory seem to rely on the "well no vaccine is 100% sterilizing" argument which has been feeling more and more like an excuse. We didn't see polio, smallpox, or chicken pox infections skyrocket after we introduced vaccines. I think Israel posted 90,000 cases yesterday, scaled for population that would be like the US hitting 3,000,000 and they are on dose #4.
#5 - We simply don't know what happens on this nanoscopic viral level. I think it's important to remember that we are shining a light in darkness for the first time. We do more PCR tests per day now, than we did in a year prior to Covid. I believe in December 2021 we did more PCR tests than we have done in human history. We have no benchmarks, no historical comparisons are possible. We don't know if had we done 500,000,000 PCR tests in say, 1992, for whatever happened to be the most dominant annual ILI virus, how much of it we would find.
I think it is really important to remember we shifted instantly from clinical diagnosis to laboratory diagnosis for the first time in 2020 in treating respiratory illnesses.
We therefore have no way of knowing if what we are seeing is novel or common.
PS - Matt you misspelled "Coyote" .... right? Or am I crazy?
I had assumed they really ramped up testing in RI as well, but it doesn't appear so. They have a nice google sheet you can see all this information if you scroll all the way down on their dashboard and play around with:
https://ri-department-of-health-covid-19-data-rihealth.hub.arcgis.com/
Between Dec 1 2020 and Jan 24 2021 RI did 858,003 tests. Between Dec 1 2021 and Jan 24 2022 they did 1,070,239.
Sure, it's a 25% increase, but I had expected a 100% increase based on these trends.
May be there is a 4th or 5th possibility too.
#4 - Leaky vaccine theory. It's the type of idea which we are not supposed to talk about, but like the lab leak theory, the more time goes on it feels harder to dismiss. This theory would explain a) why the virus came back more transmissible than ever and b) why it is less lethal. Critics of this theory seem to rely on the "well no vaccine is 100% sterilizing" argument which has been feeling more and more like an excuse. We didn't see polio, smallpox, or chicken pox infections skyrocket after we introduced vaccines. I think Israel posted 90,000 cases yesterday, scaled for population that would be like the US hitting 3,000,000 and they are on dose #4.
Maybe? http://epidemics.psu.edu/articles/view/leaky-vaccines-promote-the-transmission-of-more-virulent-virus
#5 - We simply don't know what happens on this nanoscopic viral level. I think it's important to remember that we are shining a light in darkness for the first time. We do more PCR tests per day now, than we did in a year prior to Covid. I believe in December 2021 we did more PCR tests than we have done in human history. We have no benchmarks, no historical comparisons are possible. We don't know if had we done 500,000,000 PCR tests in say, 1992, for whatever happened to be the most dominant annual ILI virus, how much of it we would find.
I think it is really important to remember we shifted instantly from clinical diagnosis to laboratory diagnosis for the first time in 2020 in treating respiratory illnesses.
We therefore have no way of knowing if what we are seeing is novel or common.
PS - Matt you misspelled "Coyote" .... right? Or am I crazy?