May 13, 2021
ADPH posted 1,144 new cases today (incl. 125 probables), although 306 of them were considered a backlog from tests performed by a single facility between September 2020 and April 2021. Even so, the net total of 838 cases is the most in a single day since March 24 and the second most since February 24. The resulting 7-day moving average of 369 daily cases (excluding backlog) is the highest in 2 weeks.
Today’s spike in cases is frustrating because Alabama’s trajectory of daily cases, prior to today, was pretty flat. In the last week before today, Alabama’s new daily cases had fallen 2.7%, compared to a nationwide decline of 21.8% over the same period. Our statewide hospitalizations have remained steady - 355 patients in 105 reporting hospitals (3.38 patients per hospital, compared to 3.51 one week ago).
ADPH has offered no further explanation for today’s spike besides the partial 306-case backlog. However, it is noteworthy that there was also a one-day spike in tests reported today - 8,641 tests, as compared to the daily average of 3,069. That leads me to think the spike may be a one-day anomaly rather than a trend. Before today, Alabama’s per capita rate of new daily cases (7 per 100K population) was lower than all but 5 other states.
As for vaccines, the United States has averaged 2.16 million doses per day over the last week, a 3% increase compared to the prior week. In Alabama, an average of 17.2k doses per day were administered, a 16% decline over the same period. Alabama has now administered at least one dose to 1,664,353 people, covering 39.8% of the eligible population (now age 12 and older), and 33.9% of the state’s entire population. At least 1,286,565 Alabamians have been fully vaccinated, or 26.2% of the entire population.
The eligible age for receiving the Pfizer vaccine officially dropped to 12 years old after the FDA and CDC formally approved the change yesterday. Governor Ivey welcomed the news, declaring that “the vaccine is our ticket back to normal.” The challenge now is to motivate more unvaccinated younger Alabamians to step up to the plate. Perhaps they will be inspired by the CDC’s guidance today that fully vaccinated people can now begin participating in indoor and outdoor activities – large or small — without wearing a mask or physically distancing. Other unvaccinated Alabamians might be persuaded by financial incentives, like the $1 million lottery award being offered by the State of Ohio.
When deciding whether to protect their children, these younger Alabamians would do well to reflect on the experience of America’s greatest patriots. John Adams, a hero of the American Revolution who became the 2nd President of the United States, was inoculated against smallpox in 1764. His wife and children were inoculated 12 years later as an epidemic raged in Boston. Gen. George Washington ordered his soldiers to be inoculated in 1777 because more men were falling to smallpox than to British muskets. Thomas Jefferson, who avidly followed the scientific literature on the subject, inoculated himself and his children in 1782.
But the most eloquent advocate of smallpox inoculation was Ben Franklin. In his autobiography nearly a half century after the death of his 4-year-old son to smallpox, the wise old man was haunted by the failure to inoculate his beloved son, Franky, whose tombstone is inscribed, “The delight of all who knew him.” Franklin wrote:
“In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example, showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”
4/30- 409
5/1 - 387
5/2 - 288
5/3 - 187
5/4 - -0-
5/5 - 662
5/6 - 565
5/7 - 314
5/8 - 419
5/9 - 244
5/10 - 106
5/11 - 310
5/12 - 347
5/13- 1,147 (including 306 backlog)