Testing is finally back up to pre-holiday levels. I looks like the holiday reporting dip and the bump from the backlog are behind us. The new case level appears to be flat or a bit down. Even hospitalizations seem like they might be flattening.
Too early to be sure, but this is our first time with a week of data that's mostly free of the holiday effects. If it's real, and if it holds, our death count should stop rising before the 7-day average tops 4,000 per day.
Where we go from here depends on human behavior...which doesn't have a good track record here. We've vaccinated about 11 million people, which isn't enough to have a big effect on infection rates, but it could start having an impact on death rates by mid February because we're making a push to get the most vulnerable covered first.
We're still on track for nearly 100k deaths in January. Hopefully February will be the start of a downtrend.
