After causing a spike of infections in the UK, the Delta variant
seems to be in retreat over there. While no one is really sure why, my (completely uneducated) guess is that a faster spreading variant is going to exhausts most of the pool of easily infected unvaccinated (or under-vaccinated) people faster. Once it hits that wall, infection numbers are going to rapidly fall.
But how long does it take to hit that wall? In the UK, the Delta surge began on May 25 and it peaked on July 21 before the numbers started to fall.
The Delta surge in the U.S. started about a month after the UK, on June 26. So if we follow that pattern, our peak will be around August 22.
Of course, the American Delta surge doesn't have to follow the exact same timing as the one in the UK. The U.S. is a much bigger country. That alone could make all the difference, Also, the two countries, while both among the more highly vaccinated nations in the world, followed different vaccination patterns. First,
the UK followed the "give everyone the first shot and delay the second shot" strategy for vaccination while the U.S. tried to give each dose as soon as the manufacturer suggested. I originally thought the British strategy was a good idea as the first dose alone gives fairly good immunity to original COVID. But it turns out,
one dose is not very good at preventing the Delta variant. So the British strategy might have inadvertently left their population more vulnerable to Delta than the Americans. On the other hand,
while the UK and US have fairly comparable vaccination rates overall, the U.S. has a lot more regional variation than the UK. We have
some states where the vaccination rates are about half the UK average and those are the places that are
driving the current Delta surge in the U.S.
Because of those differences, we can't count on following the British timeline and I'm not sure if those differences will add up to a shorter or longer timeline before we turn that corner. But I do think a corner turning is coming. We just need to get through the next few weeks, while pressing as many people to be vaccinated as possible.
