The Usual Weekend Drop And Some Slumber
Brazil: Daily infections dropped from 24.9 to 21.6 per 100K but trending up more. Likewise, daily death numbers dropped a little to 0.518 per 100K, but trending up still. Overall, numbers are increasing but at a slower pace than two weeks before. This could mean something but given that some experts assume the cases to be up to five times higher, it does not mean much.
Outlook: Very Bad
US minus CA,NY,WA: Daily infections dropped to 19.7 per 100K, the trendline remaining flat. Daily deaths decreased to 0.349 with an unchanged upward trend. Click on the risk map for your state, but that has not changed much either.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
California: Daily infections fell to 16.6 per 100K and the trendline was pushed down. Daily deaths dodged the weekend trend and increased sharply from 0.243 to 0.554 with an even steeper trend. The R-value fell a little to 0.96. The daily positive rate remained at 6.5% and the risk map changes one county in the north to green (good!).
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
Washington had no update. Here is the analysis from Friday's numbers: Daily infections rose a little to 10.7 per 100K making the trendline go flatter but still going up. Daily deaths rollercoastered from 0.394 to 0.092 to now 0.118 and trending up more steeply. The daily positive rate remained 5.6% but the R-value rose to 1. I see a plateau forming for the new infections and the deaths are going up and down at a low level. The risk map shows more minuses than pluses, which is not a good sign.
Outlook: Bad With Hope
New York: Daily infections went up to 3.9 per 100K with an unchanged downward trend. Daily death numbers more than doubled to a still relatively low 0.072, a 3-week high and trending up more steeply than the day before. Note: low values carry a high day-to-day fluctuation. The daily positive rate remained at 1.0% and the R-value at 0.99. The risk map is unchanged.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
France is in weekend slumber. Here is the analysis from Friday's numbers: The last numbers before the weekend slumber have eased a little but things do still not look good. New case numbers dropped a tiny bit to 2.01 per 100K, trending up a little steeper than the days before and daily deaths fell to a very low 0.016. The daily positive rate remained at 1.5% as did the R-value (1.3). France stays yellow on the risk map, has 175 clustered outbreaks to deal with and 10% of the Départements classified as vulnerable. For the next two days, France will navigate blindly.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
Germany: Daily cases fell to 0.29 per 100K, which is pushing the trendline down. I expect numbers to go up again after the weekend. Daily deaths were negative, which is probably an adjustment to wrong reporting in the past. On the day before they were at the extremely low of 0.008. Both, daily positive rate and R-value remained unchanged.
Outlook: Good With Concern
Tunisia added 17 new cases, of which all but one were local, which is of concern. Daily case numbers fell from 0.18 to 0.15 per 100K and are still trending up. The 44-day streak of no deaths was ended with 1 new fatality, brining the death number to an extremely low 0.009. The daily positive rate rose to 1.6%, which is also of some concern. On the risk map, Tunisia is still green and will remain there unless there were a very unlikely explosion of cases.
Outlook: Excellent With Concern
To fight the pandemic, our leaders must make decisions about mask wearing, distancing, back to school, etc. These decisions are based on scientific data, which can be complete or incomplete or even faulty.
Brazil, for instance, has probably a lot more cases than get reported, resulting in uninformed decisions, knowingly or not, on reopening.
We also know about France's pausing of data reporting on weekends (in French). Not only does this lead to no data for two days but it requires extra work when data reporting resumes because cases spike on Monday evening and need to smoothed over the two previous days.
But this is trumped by, yes, the Trump administration. In a – presumed – attempt to further demote the CDC, a once renowned institution that even spearheaded the efforts to fight Ebola in Africa, the US government changed the way the hospitals report their daily numbers. These now go to the to the Department of Homeland Security instead of the CDC, which led to messy data that may be less useful for analysis, which will in turn lead to wrong decisions, e.g. about which areas to lock down or which hospitals to pay special attention to.
Covid-19 data are not perfect but making them less perfect for political reasons during a time when accuracy is needed, is irresponsible.