pango-designation VS CovidColoradoCharts

And don't miss this news as well as the link that goes to the discussion.

By onset and reported day, the case drop has stopped. It doesn't seem certain if we are in a plateau for the last few weeks, or if cases are rising, or if it's just a back-to-school plateau followed by further drops. It is not driven by new variants though; BA.4.6 is still <10% of nationwide infections and all the next-gen variants combined are <1%.

By reported and onset date, cases may have flattened. This wasn't visible in the reported-day numbers until today, but it's been showing in the onset-day numbers for a week or so. It could be variance, but the flattening of positivity at the same time makes it more likely to be real. If true though this isn't caused by a new variant; everything is still BA.5 for now.

By reported and onset date, cases are still falling.

By reported and onset date cases keep slowly dropping. Smoothed growth rate is down to -10-15% per week. Super approximate and I should probably make an actual model here, but if there were 1500 cases/day on July 20th and -2% per day, that puts us down to 1000-1100 new cases with onset day of today, which would be the lowest since the start of May.

Cases by reported and onset date.

By onset and reported date, cases seem to be curving up a bit, but with no rapid rise from BA.5 so far. The normal surge pattern is that the upward curving will continue until an inflection point, then it'll curve back down to and beyond the surge peak. But whether this happens soon, or if upward acceleration goes on for a while, or even if we're already past the inflection point, is likely impossible to know.

By reported or onset date, there's still no definitive case rise from BA.5.

By onset and reported date, cases are doing some weird up and down thing. It's probably a plateau and the variance just random, as BA.2.12.1 drops and BA.5 continues to take over. This likely won't last long; within a few weeks BA.5 will be the large majority of cases and for it to stay flat at R(t)~1 isn't unlikely.

By reported and onset date, cases have firmly dropped over the last week. This represents BA.2.12.1 peaking and subsiding.

There's several indications that BA.2.12.1 may have now peaked. This is based first on state case numbers by reported and onset date, which have flattened completely by onset date and have been declining slightly by reported date. And secondly, on Bedford labs' per-variant case estimates, which although they do have high error show BA.2.12.1 declining in the most recent sample collection days available.