The beat goes on
Life is almost back to normal in the Asia-Pacific region while some countries in Europe and the Americas see a slowdown of the increase and some are faced with lockdowns.
My assessment of the last three days: Numbers in Brazil continue their decline. The death numbers in the US (minus 3) remain dangerously high and daily infections are climbing towards a third peak. California's daily infections are no longer declining but deaths are still going down while remaining still too high. Washington's numbers continue to waver at a relatively high level. Tunisia's daily infections might have reached a peak but daily deaths remain dangerously high. France and Britain are Europe's worries, together with Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Spain and Italy. Their death rates are reaching dangerous territory. Sweden has surpassed Germany but numbers remain lower than their neighbours'.
I added China to the graphs, probably not for long though. I explain it below in the remarks. Their data stand for all countries in the Pacific-East region and they serve as a reminder to the citizens in Western countries that things could be back to normal if they had just shown restraint during the summer.
| Daily Infections | Daily Deaths | Daily Positve Rate | R | Prediction for Dec - Jan - Feb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 09.8 ↘︎ | 0.243 ↘︎ | 50.0% | ↘︎↘︎↘︎ | |
| US minus 3 | 18.4 ↑ | 0.224 ↗︎ | 04.7% ↓ | 1.07 → | ↗︎↗︎↘︎ |
| California | 08.3 ↘︎ | 0.145 ↘︎ | 02.6% → | 1.00 → | ↗︎↗︎↘︎ |
| Washington | 08.0 ↗︎ | 0.092 → | 02.8% → | 0.95 → | ↗︎↑→ |
| New York | 06.9 ↗︎ | 0.049 ↗︎ | 01.1% → | 1.01 → | →↗︎→ |
| France | 25.9 ↑ | 0.121 ↑ | 12.0% ↑ | 1.35 ↑ | ↑↘︎↘︎ |
| Britain | 23.9 ↑ | 0.158 ↑ | 06.5% ↗︎ | 1.4 ↗︎ | ↗︎→↘︎ |
| Tunisia | 12.5 ↗︎ | 0.150↗︎ | 42.0% ↗︎ | ↑↘︎↘︎ | |
| Sweden | 06.7 ↗︎ | 0.034 ↗︎ | 03.2% ↗︎ | →↗︎→ | |
| Germany | 06.4 ↑ | 0.028 ↑ | 02.1% ↗︎ | 1.30 ↗︎ | ↗︎↗︎→ |
| China | 00.0 → | 0.000 → | →→↗︎ |
When I point out how Pacific-Eastern countries have managed to contain the epidemic a lot better than the "West," people always question China's numbers. They say that they cannot believe that China has only 35 daily cases and that the data must be falsified.
We know that anything in China is political and statistics are no exception. But if numbers had been doctored a lot (e.g. by an order of magnitude), it would have not gone unnoticed by international organisations as well as by the thousands of foreign journalists living in the country. So, while the Chinese curves must be taken with a grain of salt, similarly low numbers are reported by other countries in the Pacific-East region.
I used data from Our World in Data to generate the China graph above. I cannot find any data on testing though, which is not ideal because China has been bragging about their testing prowess.
When I began this blog in late February it was when Europe's numbers started to climb but China had already left the worst behind. Hence, China's graph misses the incline period. Chinese daily infections peaked a second time at the end of July but this outbreak was swiftly contained. And it did not trigger a rise in daily deaths. In addition, the IHME predicts a very mild increase in Chinese daily deaths in February 2021.
And here is something shocking: Germany's first incidence peak was 26 x higher than the Chinese one. Germany, as we know, performed relatively well, that is, compared to other Western nations. So why do so many people believe that China was badly hit in February? Because numbers were reported as absolute numbers and because the pandemic was new.
China is vigilant and does a lot of testing followed by quarantining and they are prepared to lock down entire cities should it be necessary. They can do that because they are a dictatorship. But New Zealand is a democracy and it can do it too because measures had been communicated properly to the people. And with so many sheep, there are probably fewer crazies who believe that this is a conspiracy by Bill Gates to control the human race.