And Florida makes it 3, another case with no international travel. We have community spread confirmed in FL, CO and CA.
At this point, 1000 active B.1.1.7 cases in the US is a lowball estimate; it's everywhere. Let's hope it's not 10k or 100k.
If you assume a 14 day infectious period and 2 missed cases for every positive COVID test, active cases are somewhere around 50x higher than daily positives, so roughly 10 million active cases in the US. If we're at 100K B.1.1.7 cases, for example, that's 1% and we can expect 6% by late Jan and 30% by late Feb...at which point it would be pushing Rt significantly higher. That would put us about 2.5 months behind the UK. If it's as low as 1000 cases, it's more like 5 months behind.
But we really have no idea where we are, and that's a HUGE difference in whether the vaccine rollout will be ahead of it or not. We need to get a statistically valid count ASAP.
Speaking of the UK..
I have been REALLY impressed by the UK health system's handling of COVID. (Political leadership, not so much.) From what they're doing with large scale RCTs on clinical effectiveness of treatments, the intense surveillance, the bold moves on testing, etc., all top notch.
Even with that background, I'm surprised and delighted that they're pushing to delay second doses. This twitter thread is from an epidemiologist who is much more ambivalent. But from what I can see of the current numbers and likely projections, even if SEVERAL of his concerns turn out to be true, they still come out ahead doing it this way. And if most of his worries don't become reality, this is a huge life-saver and a boon to the economic recovery.
Very exciting. I would love to see the US adopt this, it has the potential to end the pandemic months earlier, and before B.1.1.7 gets a chance to take over.