Using nursing homes as covid recovery centers I would expect countries move to some common mortality rate as the virus takes it 18 month to 2 year run. The differences in cases is based in many states based on whether they shut down before or after the virus was running. The southern states shut down before the virus hit in meaningful numbers, so they will be showing their growth as we reopen. Other states shut down after it was already closed more widespread.

My key metric is the mortality rate. We’ve learned a lot about treatment of Covid and with the absence of the flu people with flu like symptoms getting tested now are likely to have a higher covid positive rate in the absence of the flu. So the data may be concerning as far as cases, but the new “hotspots” are still well behind national averages and especially behind the states that closed after covid was a significant presence.

Their is no vaccine that will be widely available in the next year (at a minimum). Since we can’t shut the economy down for that long the virus will continue to do exactly what it is doing now. I focus on the mortality rate of the 1918, 1957 and 1968 pandemics having much higher mortality rates. This isn’t the worst pandemic many seniors have seen based on mortality rates. However we didn’t have social media then.