Roller Coasters Are Fun, But Not When It’s a Coronavirus Chart

Data points on national coronavirus fatality charts look like the plans for the Grim Reaper’s roller coaster. There’s a series of rises that tip over into a plummet toward a low trough, then another rise and another plummet, and repeat.

We keep getting messages to reduce our efforts to combat a still very present (more than 50,000 new cases every day in the U.S. alone) and still very deadly disease (about 2,500 new deaths each week). The U.S. military suffered about that many deaths in 20 years of combat in Afghanistan, and COVID-19 is still killing that many Americans each week.

If COVID-19 was about a military operation, in U.S. Army terms, 50,000 soldiers would be a large corps or small field army entering combat. That army would then suffer the total annihilation of an entire regiment of its soldiers, maybe even a light brigade, each week.

Yet newsrooms across the country are tired of reporting it. Government officials are tired of trying to get people to listen. Medical professionals, now armed with vaccines that have the potential to bring the coronavirus to a halt, are still saying that people are being slow about getting the latest, best round of boosters.

A few days ago, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, who specializes in the study of epidemics, tweeted out a chart showing COVID-19 hospitalizations in Britain with notations showing the attitudes at different points in the pandemic. Peaks (“we need to work together to flatten the curve”) followed by valleys (“thank goodness that’s over”) followed by rises (“herd immunity, here we come”) to a higher peak (“no one could have foreseen this”) and another valley (“freedom day!”) and another peak (“no one could have foreseen this”) then another valley (“hybrid immunity”) and a new peak (“no one could have foreseen this”) and so on.

Right now, we’re in another one of those valleys, and we’ve been told “it’s over.” Thursday—today—in Britain, the seven-day average of hospital admissions surged 48%, the largest surge of 2022. Britain has often proven to be a coronavirus bellwether for what’s heading our way.

We still need to be careful. We still need to make efforts to mitigate risks and make a serious effort to embrace our duty of care. “No one could have foreseen this” can never be our answer, to the next COVID-19 surge.