if you look at the southern sun belt states. they re at a real challenge right now for healthcare resources. we started this conversation, michael, talking about just how quickly this pandemic changes and why messaging has to change so quickly. and that is largely because new variants can come about. dr. fauci said a variant worse than delta could be coming. the next variant could be, quote, delta on steroids. what do you mean by that? well, basically the variants that we re concerned about in terms of their increased risk to humans have one of three characteristics or all three. one is they re more infectious, which we know delta is substantially more infectious even than alpha which that by itself was more infectious. number two that they can cause more severe illness just related to the question you just asked about does it cause more severe illness for the number of people who are infected. and does it have a way of evading immune protection? does it somehow get around the
also the upper midwest, my family s in new hampshire, which is getting hard hit. right, you know, it s been a real challenge for us because minnesota, michigan, wisconsin, maine, new hampshire have all been in a surge roughly for the last three to four months, and this is very similar to what we have seen in the united kingdom. unlike what we ve seen, for example, in india where we had a very, very rapid increase in cases late spring, early summer, but then case numbers dropped right back down to baseline within six to eight weeks. that s what we ve seen in the south and particularly in the southern sun belt states this summer. what we don t know is what s going to happen with the southern great lake states. you can see how the case numbers are increasing there. we could be in for a rough few weeks ahead of us here, and again, it s going to be what does omicron do and how is that going to spread, and that s the real question. and as you ve been pointing out, the cdc is now reportin
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you emphasize the good news on the medication. the other good news, average cases are going down. but i m also looking at the death toll, which is almost stuck at 2000 souls a day. and i m looking at the calendar and the temperature outside, heading into the heart of fall and winter. so overall, we were is your outlook going in for the next couple of months? well this surge that we ve been experiencing, since early july, is one that has really swept through the country week by week. if you look at the original focus for this surge, within the southern sun belt states, it s almost like viral lava has flowed northward over the course of these weeks. as of today, it s a very hard statement to make, but the very worst of the pandemic in the united states is occurring right now in alaska. they have 176 cases per 100,000
if you re in the upper midwest right now where i m in minnesota you re seeing thousands of school children who are infect. if you re in the northern and northeast area of vermont, maine and new hampshire you re seeing also a large number of cases. so it surely has subsided in the southern sun belt states through much of the midatlantic but we re now seeing it in the northern end. in term of where this is going to go, none of us know. these models have been wrong so often. and all we can tell you is that there are still 70 million americans who have not been vaccinated still susceptible to this virus that would be the wood for this human coronavirus forest fire to burn in subsequent surges. so, yes, we ll have more activity. will it be the fall, early winter, it could be. new york and l.a. are primed. they have missed the last surge and we know we have a large number of individuals from those two areas that have not yet been infected. so i think we have to be