Same old
Brazil: In spite of 3-week trendlines going up, the absolute numbers have not reached the peak of previous weeks at daily cases of 21 per 100K and daily deaths at 0.58.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
US minus CA,NY,WA: Daily numbers are below those of Brazil but unlike the latter, they are pointing up, daily positives being at an all-time high of 21 per 100K and daily deaths at 0.26. The daily positive rate remains at 9.3%.
Outlook: Very Bad
California: Daily numbers remain on an upward trend, cases up at 19.7 per 100K but the trendline has given a little. Daily deaths show the second highest value at 0.35, trending up. The daily positive rate remains high at 7.7%. The heat map has changed and it looks that only the north is really safe.
Outlook: Very Bad
Washington: Numbers point up, both daily positives, which rose from 6.8 to 8.4 per 100K with an unchanged trendline and daily deaths, which rose to 0.2, trending down in the three-week trend but trending sharply up in a trendline looking back 19 days. The daily positive rate fell from 6.2% to 5.9%. The heat map shows a further increase in an Eastern Washington county but the metropolitan King County looks fine.
Outlook: Bad
New York: Numbers are trending up a little and time will tell if this is a trend is real. Daily positives rose from 3 to 4 per 100K. Daily death numbers are low again at 0.05. The daily positive rate even fell a little to 1.0%. The heat map has not changed from the day before.
Outlook: Satisfactory
France: Trends are up but numbers seem to want to settle around their current values. Daily cases gave a little, now at 0.98 per 100K and the trendline is still pointing up. Daily deaths remain low, but rose from 0.02 to 0.04, and the daily positive rate fell from 1.2% to 1.1%. Of concern: the R value is way above 1, as the French epidemiologist claim, but I did not find a number. This is a mixed bag but does not look good.
Outlook: Satisfactory
Germany: Numbers gave a little, with daily cases down from 0.48 to 0.45 per 100K and daily deaths below <0.01, falling off the graph. The daily positive rate remains 0.5% and the R value is below 1. This would be all good if the daily trendline were not slowly edging away from the nice downward slope from three days ago.
Outlook: Good With Concern
Tunisia: New case numbers remain very low at 0.08 per 100K. Although the steeply pointing-up trendline signals a dangerous situation, trendlines are very unstable at low numbers and it looks as if case numbers were actually going down. But we shall see. No deaths in 23 days and daily positives fell from 1.1% to 1.0%.
Outlook: Excellent
In early April, the topic of mask wearing came up. In the Western world, that is. I wrote on 4 April that they were doing more harm than good, which was followed up by my writing on 26 April that I see people wearing them wrong (and by doing so have been no better than Trump) and on 29 April I wrote that masks are no answer, only distance is.
While the second part of the latter statement is still right, I was wrong on the first part. Yes, masks are not perfect and distance is preferable, but if we don't want to continue our lives as hermits, we will be in close contacts with other humans and in this case, masks are the only option. And it does not make me feel better knowing that the WHO and the entire Western world was erring with me.
It turned out now that there had been scientific studies on the positive effects of mask wearing years before the outbreak. These studies were summarised in a meta-study and published in the Lancet on 1 June. This is not easy reading material but I highlighted a few take-home messages in the Discussion starting on page 1982.
There is a good reason why masks have been a part of East Asian life for 100 years. I expect that to-be-updated pandemic preparedness plans of Western governments will include mandatory mask wearing from day one on.