COVID-19 cases dropping fast in US - Why

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  COVID-19 cases dropping fast in US - Why

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• A welcome drop: Across the world, some countries are seeing Covid-19 cases drop rapidly. Scientists suggest four reasons for it - social distancing, seasonality, seroprevalence, and shots.
• US relieved finally: COVID-19 is in retreat in America now, instead of growing! New daily cases have plunged, and hospitalizations were down almost 50 percent in February 2021. This is not due to infrequent testing, since the share of regional daily tests that are coming back positive has declined even more than the number of cases. 
• Various explanations and analyses:

1. Behaviour: Maybe Americans finally got the hang of this mask and social-distancing thing. Google mobility data shows that Americans withdrew into their homes after the winter holidays during the subsequent spike in cases. But until much of the population is vaccinated, the decline in cases is not to be seen as a green light.
2. Seasonality: Mask wearing, social distancing, and other virus-mitigating habits vary among states and countries. But the coronavirus was perhaps destined to decline this time of 2021. Since January 1, 2021, daily cases are down 70 percent in the United Kingdom, 50 percent in Canada, and 30 percent in Portugal. So perhaps the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is indeed seasonal. Many viruses fare best in cold and dry conditions; they’re not well designed to thrive in warmer, sunnier, and more humid outdoor areas. Each virus is a bundle of genes and protein encased in a fatty lipid molecule. This fatty shell breaks down more easily in warmer environments. 
3. Partial immunity: Is the virus running out of bodies? The coronavirus needs bodies in order to survive and replicate, and it now has access to fewer welcome hosts. Fifteen to 30 percent of American adults have already been infected with COVID-19, according to CDC estimates. Since people recovering from COVID-19 typically develop lasting immunological protection for many months (at least), the number of antibodies swirling around the U.S. population may naturally constrict the original coronavirus’s path forward. Immunity is probably concentrated among people who had little opportunity to avoid the disease, such as homeless people, frontline and essential workers, and people living in crowded multigenerational homes. 
4. Herd immunity: Nothing is herd immunity, really. But it is partial immunity among the very populations that have been most likely to contract the disease, perhaps narrowing the path forward for the original SARS-CoV-2. 
5. The variants: The virus mutations from South Africa and Brazil in particular may elude the immunological protection among COVID-19 survivors. It is important to accelerate vaccinations before these variants take off.

• Vaccines: The vaccines—especially the synthetic-mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna—are highly effective at preventing infection. Among those infected, they also reduce symptomatic illness. And among those with symptoms, they reduce long-term hospitalization and death to something like zero. A vaccine is not just one line of immunological defense, but several—a high wall protecting a castle and, to fight the few who bypass the wall, a group of castle defenders holding vats of searing-hot tar to pour all over the invaders. Even if the rise of new variants slows the decline in cases, it is unlikely to lead to a sharp rise in mortality and hospitalizations. 
• Summary: Although the pandemic isn’t over, the US has perhaps reached the beginning of the end of COVID-19 as an exponential, existential, and mortal threat to its health-care system and our senior population.

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