Good can get worse and bad can get better.
Brazil: There is now a trend visible to the better. Daily case numbers remain high but sunk a little to 20 per 100K. Daily deaths are slightly down to 0.58 and while they are currently trending up, I see a long-term trend forming that puts the fatalities on a very careful downward trend.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
US minus CA,NY,WA: Daily positives have an all-time high for the second day in a row, now at 19 per 100K but cases are trending less steeply for the sixth day in a row. This could be a peak forming, but only time will tell. Daily deaths have given a little for the third day but they remain much higher than usual, which still could still be the beginning of a new upward trend. The daily positive rate are up from 9% to 9.3% of all tests done. Testing is being increased in many states and we are picking up a lot more asymptomatic cases than, let's say, Germany, where relatively little testing is done. This makes the "cases" look a little worse than they are. See below.
Outlook: Bad
California: Daily positives have fallen from the high of 27 to now 18 per 100K and the trendline has given a little. The new death value is a record high and the trendline is now going flat. The daily positive rate fell from 7.7% to 7.6%. The heat map is taken from globalepidemics.org and shows the counties with increasing case numbers. Los Angeles is no longer red, but Santa Barbara and Marin county are, as well as the agricultural counties. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are doing better..
Outlook: Very Bad
Washington: Daily positives rose from 5.7 to 6.8 per 100K and the trendline is pointing up less steeply than the day before. Daily deaths are lower than the day before and they remain relatively low. Although the 3-week trendline is sharply pointing down, I see a trend forming in which fatalities will remain around the current mark. The daily positive rate rose from 5.8% to 6.2%, which is not so good. The heat map shows that the bulk of the increase is in Eastern Washington.
Outlook: Bad
New York: Daily positives are trending down a little and numbers fell from 3.5 to 3 per 100K. Daily death numbers gave a little but are still the second highest in a month. The daily positive rate remains at the same 1.1% for the fourth week now. The heat map shows all counties to be green or yellow, which is consistent with the other data.
Outlook: Satisfactory
France: Daily cases gave a little, now at 0.93 per 100K and the trendline is still pointing up. Daily deaths remain low, and the daily rate percent are at 1.2%. After the number glitches by French health officials in the last weeks, I decided to re-import all numbers. Now there is no more steep drop in cumulative cases from when the new counting method was introduced. The rest of the numbers remain largely the same.
Outlook: Satisfactory
Germany: Daily cases went slightly down to 0.48 per 100K but the trendline, while still pointing down, is doing so less steeply. Deaths remain very low (<0.01 per 100K) and trending down. The daily positive rate is at 0.5%.
While these numbers look good, the schools have reopened a few days ago and the pupils are not required to wear masks inside. In my remarks from 2 July, I wrote about the virus being kept alive in the young, from there it could jump to the older population. While I see many happy young faces around me, I am concerned that this will push numbers up in the long run. In a neighbouring village, one entire class has already be forced into quarantine because one pupil came from a family that was tested positive. Case numbers in the county I reside in are growing again, after weeks of no new cases.
Outlook: Good With Concern
Tunisia: Case numbers remain very low and they gave a little from the day before, now at 0.09 per 100K. My earlier fear about a new trend forming was unfounded. No deaths in 22 days and daily positives fell from 1.1% to 1.0%.
Outlook: Excellent
What is a case? Strictly speaking, a case is somebody with symptoms, which are confirmed by a test. In the early stages of the disease, tests were scarce and only people who presented with symptoms were tested.
Positive tests = Cases.
In the later stages of the pandemic, some countries started to ramp up testing and extend it to people without symptoms but part of risk groups or, as in the US, there is large drive-by testing of anybody who comes in. This increased the number of symptomless carriers. Most of these will never get sick and hence are not strictly cases.
Positive tests > Cases
The German RKI lists the cases and the positives separately. For my graphs, I have been using the case numbers because the positives are reported only weekly and with a huge delay. In the month of June, there were roughly 16% more positives than there were cases (for simplicity I call them asymptomatic people). This percentage was roughly the same in May and April.
Germany has not ramped up their testing like the US did. In fact, Germans who see their doctor for apparent Covid-19 symptoms may not get tested at all because the costs are not reimbursed !!! If Germany had done as much testing as the US, the number of asymptomatic people could not have remained 16% over three months and "case" numbers would potentially have looked more like New York's.
France and Tunisia also report the cases and not the positives. Incidentally, they also have a low testing rate.
So, from now on, I shall use the term "infections" for numbers from the Americas and "cases" for Europe and Tunisia and I shall place more emphasis on the number of fatalities for my assessment.