Hope and despair
Brazil: Daily case numbers remain high but sunk a little to 21 per 100K. With every day that passes, this looks as if a peak had been reached. Daily deaths are slightly down to 0.6 and continue their slight downward trend, which gives me hope that a turning point might have been reached.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
US minus CA,NY,WA: Daily cases have reached a new all-time high at 18 per 100K but cases are trending less steeply for the fifth day in a row. Daily deaths have given a little but they remain much higher than usual, which still could be the beginning of a new upward trend. Daily positives are down from 8.6% to 9%.
Outlook: Very Bad
California: Daily cases have surged to a record high of 29 per 100K and the trendline remains the same as the day before. The new death value is again the second highest in this pandemic and the trendline is still pointing downward but up from the day before.. Daily positives grew from 7.5% to 7.7%.
Outlook: Very Bad
Washington: Daily cases fell from 14.2 to 5.7 per 100K and the daily case trend is pointing up a little less steeply than the day before. Daily deaths have reached a new monthly high and there might be a new upward trend in the making, as with CA and the US. Daily positives rose from 5.3% to 5.8%, which is consistent with the rise in cases.
Outlook: Very Bad
New York: The daily cases keep their flat trend and the numbers are at 3.5 per 100K. Daily death numbers went up from 0.6 to 1.0 per 100K. This is hopefully an outlier. Daily positives remain at the same 1.1% for the fourth week now.
Outlook: Bad With Hope
France: Daily cases went up from 0.7 to 1 per 100K and the trendline remains the same, that is, pointing up. If I squint my eyes, I see them plateauing at around 1 per 100K. The next days will show but so far I am no longer concerned. And the French health official are apparently not either. Daily deaths remain low, which is great.
Outlook: Satisfactory
Germany: Daily cases went slightly up to 0.53 per 100K but the trendline still goes down nicely. Deaths remain very low (0.01 per 100K) and trending down.
Outlook: Good
Tunisia: Case numbers went up the fourth day in a row, now at 0.14 per 100K. If this trend continues, it would be of concern, but numbers remain in a good range still. No deaths in 21 days and daily positives rose to 1.1%.
Outlook: Excellent With Concern
Early in the pandemic, we had discussed herd immunity as one of two endpoints of the pandemic. The other being the vaccine. Even I wrote about it. But a week later, I wrote that about 35 000 Germans would need to be infected every day to reach herd immunity 18 months later (the German numbers peaked at stlightly over 6000 per day).
We know that a viral infection does not necessarily trigger a good immune response, and a Spanish study now shows that the first, devastating wave of Covid-19, which is about to ebb off, left the country with just 5% of the people with an immune response. Far below the 70-90% we would need to protect the uninfected.
This leaves more pressure on the vaccine to be effective.