If Michael Osterholm's predictions are accurate, the United States is about to be hit by the worst wave (the 4th) of all the waves so far. This means that our nation will go into full lockdown again in the next couple of weeks. Hope he is wrong.
Edited
I'm sorry, I know this is random internet guy vs experienced expert with much higher education blah blah blah but there is no. goddamn. way. this (completely hypothetical and assumed) spring wave tops the late October-early January surge. I mean seriously can anyone conceivably see that? I would eat my damn shoe if that happened. I'm not even that *inset blind optimist who ignores facts here* kinda guy, I've been in the gray area of trying to be a realist through this whole thing and there is just no fucking way. This is gonna age like when they thought there would be millions upon millions of deaths in the USA alone last march. Sometimes, its rare, but sometimes, hope just wins out.
Lets look at facts, the study published that said it will be the dominant strain by march was and is still non peer reviewed, and when it was published they said by march. Now guys that is in less than 2 weeks. Currently, yes it is undercounted almost certainly, but currently theres just over a thousand UK variant cases in the whole country. We don't even have all 50 states reporting one yet. Does anyone here see it taking over by march? Hell by April? I sure as hell don't.
Second fact, the main two states hit by this ultra scary variant, Florida and California, are having their cases drop like a fuckin rock. He said in the interview that you look at Europe and the Middle East and see they got rocked by it but... I don't know if he has internet access or not but if he does he should google cases for both of those now. They had a huge winter spike like just about every single place on earth, and now cases are plummeting and have been for the past month. Leading one to think that was a seasonality related uptick more than a variant one.
Last fact, unlike the Brazil and South African variants, natural immunity is still protective again the B117 UK strain. And don't even get me started on the vaccines, which, by the way have accelerated at a absolutely tremendous pace, and we just secured hundreds of millions of more doses, enough for 80% of adults by the end of July potentially, still respond very well to this variant. There was not a significant drop in efficacy like the South African one. So I'm just not seeing it. Yeah he's smarter than me sure but with everything at hand I think this man has slipped into doom and gloom a tad.
