Covid's Mysterious Two Month Cycle

[Tomconroy]

For reasons that are not well understood Covid seems to run in a cycle of approximately four months or so, peaking halfway through and then quickly dissipaiting. We appear to be on the downslope of the cycle now with cases dropping 35 percent in the US since Sept 1 and 30 percent worldwide.
Reprinted from today's NY Times:

https://www.wionews.com/world/trying-to-make-sense-of-covids-mysterious-2-month-cycle-418142

[lark]

1. Sadly it has come roaring back previously & probably will this time as well.

I'm hoping that all the vaccinations in areas hit hard this round will prevent another huge spike with all of those ramifications.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. It isn't that mysterious.

Covid spreads when people are in close contact with another. It jumps during vacation seasons and dips when people are normally just stuck at home anyway. It'll be back up in November, after Thanksgiving.

[WA-03 Democrat]

12. This 1000%

[Baitball Blogger]

14. +1

[Blues Heron]

3. to me it looks more like 4 months

in the US the delta wave began in the beginning of July, then peaked beginning of September

India's delta wave had a 4 month trough to trough timing, peaking two months in.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

on edit - the article says the same thing, they call it a two month cycle but are really talking about just the first half of it.

[genxlib]

4. Here's my theory

Call it the "Yippee-Oh shit" cycle.

People declare victory and behave as if all is good. ie holidays, summertime, etc.

Then, "oh shit" and people go back to the turtle position again.

[luvs2sing]

7. This!

I shall forever refer to it this way.

[Mad_Machine76]

9. Or not really

It really seems like, once all of the masking, social distancing orders ended at the beginning of the summer, things look relatively the same as they did pre-COVID- except for the continued sickness and death, which (it seems) people are pretty much just living with at this point, either because they don't care or they just have to deal with to keep their jobs and make a living. Kinda depressing really. I mean, I know that we have vaccines now, but there is still a pretty sizable segment of the society that refuses to get it and refuses to accept even the tiniest mitigation measures.

[2naSalit]

11. Perfect!

That's the response cycle we seem to have adopted. Great name for it.

[MontanaFarmer]

5. The money quote in here, from Dr. Scott Gottlieb, is a big one and an encouraging one.

It's offered as his opinion, of course, but does make some sense given the levels of both vaccination and infection we've seen. He is of the opinion that this Delta surge will be the last major wave we see in America. I am hopeful that he's correct. As soon as I can get my children vaccinated I'll be feeling much better about my family's own situation in all this, but I'll never get over what these anti-vaxxers have put our society and especially our healthcare workers through this summer. What a disaster.

[Tomconroy]

6. Dr. Gottlieb, although a Republican, is pretty sharp. He was lead advisor on

Covid to CT governor Ned Lamont. I'm going to guess he is right. He really studies the numbers.

[Klaralven]

8. I doubt that we'll ever get back to the 12000 daily new cases of June, 2021

Or down to the 250 daily deaths of July, 2021.

Some combination of unvaccinated cases and breakthrough cases will continue at a higher level.

[Blues Heron]

10. I agree, looking at India, they settled down to twice what they were before delta

So we will probably settle down at 20-30,000/day

[dutch777]

13. Two key factors-- human behavior as others noted and new variants

It's not Covid per se unless there are new more virulent variants but rather how much people let their guard down or just pretend like it isn't present in their environment. We are currently driving across the country and after we left WA state, pretty much everyone in ID, MT and WY has let their guard down. I pretty much will expect the same until we get to the east coast. We have been getting takeout meals and enjoying the great outdoors instead of being indoors. Lots of folks are losing business and don't realize it.