A Fourth Wave of COVID-19 Is Brewing in the U.S. | Time
A Fourth Wave of COVID-19 Is Brewing in the U.S. Is There Enough Time to Stop It?
With every passing day, the United States appears more likely to be on the cusp of a
dreaded fourth wave of COVID-19 infections, even as the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans
inches toward 50%. In the past two weeks, the number of average new daily cases has more than doubled, from 13,200 on July 4 to more than 32,300 on July 18, a surge that harbors grim reminders of the fronts of the
second and
third waves in the summer and fall of 2020.
But on closer inspection, this surge looks significantly different than those we have seen in the past—and may very well be worse than it looks on the page.
The coronavirus pandemic has never, even in its worst heights last winter, struck the U.S. uniformly. Instead, it has wandered from eruptions in specific urban areas to suburban and rural counties and then back again,
like a persistent hurricane. Now, as the gap between states’ completed vaccination rates widens—Alabama has vaccinated just 33.7% of residents, compared to nearly 70% in Vermont—the per capita rate of new cases has clustered in a handful of regions where a majority of adults remain unvaccinated even as reopening continues apace.
Here’s a county-level map of the 14-day growth of cases per 100,000 residents by county:
To draw on my amateur oceanography, the current crest resembles less a wave than a
rip tide, with surges of current inundating several hotspots while the remainder of the country remains blissfully unaware (or unwilling to admit) that the pandemic is not remotely over. The upshot is that local data, rather than state- or nationwide-level figures, now paint the most accurate picture of the current state of the outbreak.
“State-wide cases don’t tell the entire story. We need a finer-toothed comb,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, the lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins University
Testing Insights Initiative.
As Nuzzo notes, the most recent documented outbreaks are more concentrated in rural areas than those of the worst spikes over the past 16 months (though the virus
didn’t spare any corner of the country). What appears to be different now, even within more rural regions, is a blossoming of outbreaks that are at the moment highly clustered, particularly along the border between Arkansas and Missouri as well as northeast Florida and southeast Georgia.
But any such observation comes with the same caveat that we on the Numbers Beat have been striving to communicate since the beginning: The number of cases is contingent on the number of people being tested for the virus, a figure that can only underestimate the true picture, not exaggerate it.
Let’s recall: A year ago, COVID-19 skeptics,
including then-Vice President Mike Pence, were attributing a spike in cases at the time to an increase in testing, a claim that
was easily debunked. Now we face the opposite question: As the
number of weekly tests has plummeted, taking a back seat to vaccination, and with the sense of urgency abating (for now), is the situation in fact worse than it appears?
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