How about more people dying? You can't die twice. Take Germany for example. In August there were about 15 deaths per day, now it's more than 200. Another big country, Poland: over the summer there were less than 10 deathy daily, now it's about 300. Hungary is smaller, but while in the summer there were consistently less than 5 deaths daily, now it's almost 150. If this is not skyrocketing, then what is?
Be wary of "skyrocketing" claims from questionable sources.
Precedents:
* Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
* Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/florida
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
> * Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
> * Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
And...if the graph keeps looking like it has, we will have spikes followed by drops followed by spikes again, wash, rinse, and repeat. Florida has a different cycle (maybe AC related as people get cold inside during the hot summer, and the fall comes along and weather is nice, and then a cold snap might happen in January).
> The rising trend of 7-day incidences observed since the end of September 2021 has in the last weeks significantly accelerated. The current number of cases is already higher than all so far at the peaks of the previous waves of disease. This high Infection pressure in the population increasingly affects vulnerable groups as well as especially vulnerable people in the older age groups. This also leads to a significant increase in Severe disease courses and deaths and the occurrence of vaccination are more likely to rupture.
Sounds a lot like "skyrocketing" to me.
[1] https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...
So the scientific majority opinion seems to be that you are not at all helpless against those waves.
> cases go up then go down
Yes, the wave will end eventually, probably around easter if going by the previous waves. Question is how much death and damage it will cause until then. That's something that can very much be influenced.
To keep things in perspective, covid mortality in Germany was 1.2/k since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 10/k annual death rate from all causes. Hopefully the vaccines will help keeping this number even lower. Further confounding the issue, the death certificate cause of death for infectious diseases often times masks other systemic issues, for instance people with cancer are more susceptible to die of influenza or pneumonia [2]. What I suspect is happening is that covid replaced influenza and pneumonia as the Grim Reaper of choice. Remember that flu "paused" last year [3].
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33107375
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/08/flu-season-...