Is it time to hit the panic button on covid ... again?

First some numbers (with sources):

1. 7-day averages of new cases are on the rise in more than 13 states. At least 13 states have recorded at least a 10% rise in daily average positive cases of Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins data Friday—an improvement from 21 states on Thursday—but underscoring that the fight against the pandemic is far from over.

See

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/17/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html

2. The nation-wide 7-day moving average of new cases has risen 8.1 from the previous week, but is still 28% of the peak recorded.

See

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view

3. Over 200 million vaccine doses have been administered. 38% of the US population has received at least one dose, over 24% are fully vaccinated. See

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

4. Of all emergency room visits, less than 2% are related to covid. To put this number in perspective, the peak was 7.4%. See

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#ed-visits

5. Vaccine efficacy is turning out to be even better than the 94–95% predicted from the Phase 3 trials. It is currently running at 99.9992%! See

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-identifies-small-group-of-covid-19-infections-among-fully-vaccinated-patients-11618490232

(oops: A right-wing link!)

So, what do you think? Should we be hitting the panic button yet again?