Originally Posted by
nishimark
Not complaining. But rather surprised at how rapid the drop has been. Are we really out of the woods? The next 2-3 months will be interesting.
I may be wrong but IMHO, Japan achieved herd immunity in late August. The infection rate could start to increase again, but I tend to think that it will continue to decline (perhaps at a slower rate) unless we get hit with a new much more contagious variant. As far as I can tell there are really only two things that significantly impact the transmission rate.... a) vaccinations and b) the amount of time people spend in poorly ventilated indoor space.
The number of daily vaccinations is dropping a little, but as a percentage of the remaining un-vaccinated population, the daily vax rate is holding . And since transmission declines lag actual vaxes there's probably 3 to 4 weeks of momentum from vaccines already administered or already scheduled that will continue to push transmission down even if the vax rate goes to zero tomorrow.
The big question is how much increase there will be in restaurant and bar traffic since these are the places most likely to have poor ventilation and spawn transmission. Offsetting this somewhat is the fact that the age cohort patronizing these places is the same cohort currently receiving most of the vaccinations so that the vax rate for this susceptible age group is rapidly increasing.
My guess is that current decline in transmissions will taper a bit from the current weekly drops of 40 to 50% to something like weekly declines in the 20 to 30% range.