It's the weekend, but everything looks better but nothing really good
Brazil: The upwards trend of new infections is broken. Weekend numbers, which are always lower, have sunken to 13.6 per 100K and daily deaths went down to 0.44, which remains the highest death toll per capita in the regions shown in this blog.
Outlook: Very Bad With Lots Of Hope
US minus CA,NY,WA: The weekend made daily infections drop to 20.2 per 100K, but they continue their upward trend since mid June. Likewise, daily deaths came down a little to 0.27 but with a clear and steep upward trend. The daily positive rate remained at 9.8% and some counties in the north-east see a shift from green to yellow on the heat map and there is more red in the south.
Outlook: Very Bad
California follows the trend of the US with the daily infection number down to 23.3 per 100K, going up since mid May, and daily deaths giving a little to 0.3 but trending up sharply. The daily positive rate remained on 7.1%. The "+" and "-" signs on the heat map indicate the counties that went to better or worse risk, including San Francisco and San Mateo counties, which got worse.
Outlook: Very Bad
Washington: The weekend made daily infections ease, slumping from 16.6 to 9.9 per 100K, but still trending up. Daily deaths, however, are trending flat now, at 0.09. The daily positive rate fell to 5.9%. Numbers are going up again in King County, especially in the south and the risk level could follow soon (the heat map is three days behind the data).
Outlook: Bad
New York: Like in Washington, the weekend made daily infection numbers ease, now at 3.9 per 100K, but trending up. Daily infections are now at a level they were a month ago. Daily death numbers, did not only not drop but went up from a low 0.05 to a still low 0.06 and trending flat. The daily positive rate rose to 1.2%. Interestingly, some counties on the heat map went from yellow to green and I am curious to see when (if) the counties that make up New York City will go from yellow to orange.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
France is pausing data reporting for the weekend: Here is Friday's analysis: Daily cases went up again, from 0.66 to 0.8 and now to 1.25 per 100K and trending slightly up. Daily deaths sagged to an even lower 0.021, which is good, were it not for the increasing trendline. The daily positive rate went from 0.9% to 1.1% and now 1.2% and the R value is still above 1.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
Germany: The weekend made daily cases drop to 0.24 per 100K but still trending up like the day before. If a huge daily drop cannot sway the trendline to budge, it is of concern, all the more so as Germany is still not doing enough testing. That was the bad. The good: Daily deaths remained far below 0.01 (at 0.0012) and the daily positive rate was 0.6% and the R value is below one.
There was one outbreak in yet another slaughterhouse (link in German). The workers live in several districts and thus each remained each under the threshold for a local lockdown. But otherwise, as days are progressing without anything severe happening in the other states (Germany is heavily federalised, and each state did its own lockdown) there are thoughts about re-opening the stadiums, albeit not at full capacity. There is also an interesting experiment planned in which scientists will observe concertgoers to gauge their risk of infection in several scenarios.
Outlook: Good With Concern
Tunisia: Those Tunisians living abroad continue returning and bringing with them the virus. Of the 13 now cases, 9 came from outside. But 4 were from inside. These are numbers other countries dream about, in particular Washington, which has a similar population number. Daily cases rose to 0.11 per 100K and daily deaths remained on 0 for 31 days. Not surprisingly, the daily positive rate rose to 1.6%.
Outlook: Excellent With Concern
We know that we could have known earlier. The US was denying the virus when Italy had already been hit. That was February and the US is thousands of kilometres away from both China and Italy. But Germany isn't and yet they pointed their fingers at Italy and did nothing. I wrote about it on 10 March.
And then there were rumours about that CIA briefing from January that Trump allegedly never read. Going back even a few more weeks, there is allegation that China knew about the virus outbreak as early as November and hush-hushed it. But this was reported mostly in Trump-friendly media.
And now there is this former Trump administration economist who claims that he had alerted the White House about a looming pandemic as early as September. Of course, our secret services are no fools but it is likely that bad news about a looming pandemic were diluted in a sea of other bad news, including climate change.
Why am I bringing this up again? Because evidence is mounting that non-East-Asian countries could have avoided the worst of the pandemic if they had taken the following precautions in December or early January:
- Reduce travel from and to China,
- Make your own test (the virus DNA sequence was known in January) or buy it from a reputable source or at least use the fever thermometers and test, test, test everybody who comes into the country,
- Have local health authorities on high alert and test, test, test whenever there is doubt,
- Cancel all human gatherings of 50 people or more.
Back in January, something akin to these rules would have been very hard to sell to the voters and weak politicians would have not withstood the tempest befalling them. Or the courts would have immediately struck them down. Which is the inherent weakness of democracies in times of duress and thus underlines the importance of a comprehensive pandemic plan with clear, lawsuit-proof directions for when it is to be instated.