The drop-off in coronavirus cases in January and February has been “surprising,” he says. There are likely several explanations — seasonality, post-holiday shifts in behavior, and the rollout of vaccines. But mostly, “I think this is all winter . . . what you’re seeing is a winter respiratory virus doing what it does in the winter.”

Thomas Duszynski, the director of epidemiology education at the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University and Purdue University in Indianapolis, tells NRO that coronavirus cases began climbing around Labor Day, and the surges that were predicted after Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas really “were buried in just such large community spread across . . . many parts of the nation.” There appears to have been a short post-Christmas surge in cases into early January, he notes.

One reason cases may have fallen so sharply, he suggests, is that winter is finally keeping people at home:

“We got through the holidays. Everybody went where they wanted to go. They got the disease, and now they’re starting to do the things we’re asking them to do. They’re staying home. There isn’t any place to go.”