This Is Very Possible

Here we go again: Biden campaign COVID alarmist says we're in a 'Category 5 hurricane' | Washington Examiner

The Washington Examiner mocks this, but maybe they shouldn’t.

[Michael Osterholm] said[,] "At this point, we will see in the next two weeks the highest number of cases reported globally since the end of the pandemic. In terms of the United States, we're just at the beginning of this surge. We haven't even really begun to see it yet."

The Examiner follows up thusly:

On Jan. 31, the U.S. was averaging nearly 150,000 new coronavirus infections per day. As of Monday, we're averaging about 64,000. Highly effective vaccines have flooded the market. The New York Times reported on Monday that "the country is averaging fewer than 900 newly reported deaths a day for the first time since early November."

Who is Osterholm?

Osterholm was an adviser to President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. He is the director for the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

But, looking at my handy-dandy spreadsheet, I see this. World cases on March 16 were 338,122. On April 10, they were 847,219. That is a frightening increase. In the United States, cases on March 14 were 34,840. On April 9, 72,381. We’re not as far along as the rest of the world, but we’re definitely headed in the wrong direction.

You want some really frightening numbers? Look at India and Brazil. Brazil has gone from 12,658,109 total cases on April 1 to 13,279,857 cases on April 10. India went from 12,221,665 to 13,205,926 in the same time period. From April 1 to April 10, Brazil’s fatalities increased from 317,646 to 345,025.

Source: Wikipedia here and here.

I am hoping that this surge will be muted by the vaccine, but there’s no guarantee of that. In a month, we may all be incredibly nervous again. There’s definitely reason to be nervous now. I would say that one trend that has unfortunately been true over the last year (and I am a victim of it as well), is that we have not usually been worried enough soon enough.

Ok, I’m worried now. The numbers don’t look good. I’ve seen the previous surges. I have the data. This is how they looked.