Put on your winter coats, it is going to get cold
Restaurants and schools in Germany are advised to have a cross-current blowing to keep virus particles down.
I have made a few changes (da capo): The colours on the graphs are now consistently blue for infections and red for deaths. The 7-day running average of the daily numbers is now fatter, which is helpful in places with a high day-to-day variability, such as for France. Furthermore, instead of writing about every country/state, I include a summary table listing the four parameters and, a new addition, the IHME prediction for the daily death numbers in the coming three months.
My assessment of the last four days: Numbers in Brazil and California are still on a decline. Washington is, like several times before, undecided about the direction and, on top of it, is missing 2-3 days of data. The other countries and states have more or less climbing incidence numbers; but the ones with daily deaths above 0.100 per 100K and rising are of greatest concern: France, Britain and Tunisia.
| Daily Infections | Daily Deaths | Daily Positve Rate | R | Prediction for Dec - Jan - Feb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 09.8 ↘︎ | 0.238 ↘︎ | 50.0% | ↘︎↘︎↘︎ | |
| US minus 3 | 17.0 ↑ | 0.233 ↘︎ | 06.1% ↑ | 1.05 → | ↗︎↗︎→ |
| California | 08.7 ↘︎ | 0.146 ↘︎ | 02.7% ↗︎ | 1.00 ↗︎ | ↗︎↗︎↘︎ |
| Washington | 05.2 ↗︎ | 0.060 → | 02.6% ↘︎ | 0.93 ↘︎ | ↗︎↗︎→ |
| New York | 07.2 ↑ | 0.046 ↗︎ | 01.2% → | 1.03 ↘︎ | →→↗︎ |
| France | 25.9 ↗︎ | 0.121 ↑ | 12.0% ↑ | 1.35 ↑ | ↑↘︎↘︎ |
| Britain | 25.1 ↑ | 0.137 ↑ | 06.5% ↗︎↑ | 1.35 → | ↗︎→↘︎ |
| Tunisia | 12.8 ↑ | 0.204 ↑ | 42.0% ↑ | ↑↘︎↘︎ | |
| Sweden | 06.3 ↗︎ | 0.011 → | 02.2% → | ↗︎↗︎→ | |
| Germany | 04.9 ↗︎ | 0.020 ↗︎ | 01.3% → | 1.20 ↘︎ | ↗︎↗︎↗︎ |
"The West is being left behind as it squanders Covid-19 lessons from Asia-Pacific." This is the headline of a very interesting opinion piece by Tara John on CNN. Here is a PDF should the link be broken.
Tara's writing resonates with my own observations: 1. The West (i.e. countries that have a predominantly European population or European leadership) has, from the onset, underestimated the pandemic (see my post from 10 March). 2. The West has belittled China, Asia-Pacific and Africa (see my post from 29 June) for their, very successful, responses and it is still questioning their good numbers as "probably doctored." 3. The West has by far the worst response to the pandemic (as seen in the World Risk Map from 2020-10-13 below). And, as a consequence, 4. the West will see an accelerated decline of its economical and political influence. The latter is, of course, pure speculation.
Here are just two example pairs to demonstrate my observations. One from the West and one from the East:
(West) Germany has been debating for over a week on whether people from high-risk areas should be allowed to vacation in low-risk areas.
(East) China tests 9 million people in Qingdao (where they make the great Tsingtao beer) because of six cases.
(West) The White House has seen as many daily infections per capita as China or Australia. And the president is planning more of these superspreader events.
(East) In August, the city of Auckland, New Zealand recorded 179 linked cases and the entire city was immediately put in a local lockdown that lasted until early October.
