Just remember that on January 22nd, the CDC published a model in the MMWR that actually addresses their concern about what B117 will do in terms of increase per what it has done in Europe and the Middle East. They were the ones that came forward and said, look at what this might do and this surge effort in March. If we look at what’s happening in Europe and the Middle East, it’s very clear that this has had a tremendous impact there after it started out much like it has started in the United States, meaning that there were weeks where we have seen lower level transmission with a gradual increase. This past Tuesday, CDC reported that among the B117 variants in the United States there had been twelve hundred and seventy-seven such variants reported from forty-two states. If one looks at the B1351 variant from South Africa where we’ve had 19 reported cases in 10 states. And P1, the Brazilian variant, we’ve seen three cases reported in two states. Clearly, the activity is with the B117. Places like California and Florida are really at the top of that list. Florida is now reporting four hundred sixteen such cases. California, one hundred and eighty-six. Do I believe that they’re representative of what’s happening out there? No, we know we have underreporting occurring, a lack of sequencing. But just as was predicted two weeks ago, we’re beginning to see the number of B117 variants double about every ten days. This is exactly what happened in Europe before we saw the major surges. So if we look at the UK, where today 80 percent of the isolates are B117. Their cases do continue to decline. But remember, they’ve been in a lockdown now since before Christmas, a real lockdown. Their peak average seven-day new cases back then were at sixty thousand cases a day. Today they’re at thirteen thousand two hundred after that lockdown. They’re ready to start relaxing a bit of that. But again, it shows you what it took to drive that surge down. Denmark is another country where we’ve seen 42.5 percent of their samples are B117 now, up from 30 percent the week before that and 19 percent two weeks before that. At this point, they, too, are seeing this challenge with B117. And I could go through the laundry list of other countries. I won’t because it’s the same story where this starts to transmit, it spreads. It causes severe problems. The data are clear now that there is, in fact, evidence of increased severe disease. What we have to understand right now is what we will be seeing in these next weeks ahead . . . You have to understand some of the most vocal people right now who are critical of this idea that there will be a surge with B117 are the same people who early in the pandemic were critical that covid-19 was going to be a problem at all and actually said so publicly on many occasions and indicated that influenza would continue to be the most important infectious disease we’d have in the upcoming months. And I’m telling you right now, everything in my public health background, my training, and 45 years of in the trenches tells me that this is going to be a big peak.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/25/dr-osterholms-warning-covid-hurricane-on-the-horizon/
