You cannot get a little pregnant
Germany has utterly failed with its lockdown "light" while Charlemagne's other daughter, France, had a real lockdown, which is pushing numbers down at a rapid pace. This demonstrates again that a short, strict lockdown is the only solution in a pandemic (see Bloomberg opinion).
Brazil's numbers are still increasing but projected to decline again in early January. IHME's earlier projection did not pick up this renewed surge but the latest one does. This shows very nicely the limits of predictions, particularly short term.
In the U.S. numbers are climbing even without the Thanksgiving push, which is expected in a week or so. New York State, which used to be the worst hit early in the pandemic, only to subsequently fare the best of all U.S. states, is now slated to triple its daily death numbers by February. By then, California will see 5x current daily death numbers. Washington's daily fatalities – already high – are not expected to climb very much higher.
France and Britain are on a good course. For now at least. Looking back to the end of the first lockdown, numbers were on the rise again not even 2 months after lockdown ended. Translated to this second lockdown, a renewed increase in March could therefore counteract the effects expected from the early stages of vaccination.
Germany's incidence numbers have reached a plateau and refuse to go down, all the while the death numbers keep climbing. With 45% of Germans having stated that they will celebrate Christmas like they used to, daily fatalities are expected to go from ~400 a day to over 1000. Sweden is expected to share Germany's fate.
Tunisia is not doing well and has a pretty sad outlook for the next six months. Daily deaths are expected to remain high until the end of January and then to fall if measures are tightened. The more likely scenario however is no additional measures that could endanger an economy on the verge of collapse and numbers are then expected to remain high for another month and then fall. Unlike the rich countries to the North, the government has ordered sufficient doses of the vaccine for the end of July only, as the director of the Pasteur Institute just announced.
| Daily Infections | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | R value | January Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 20.1 ↗︎ | 0.271 ↗︎ | ↘︎ | ||
| US minus 3 | 56.0 → | 0.675 ↗︎ | 09.2% ↘︎ | 1.07 ↘︎ | ↑ |
| California | 41.7 ↑ | 0.198 ↑ | 08.5% ↑ | 1.22 ↗︎ | ⬆︎ |
| Washington | 31.4 ↗︎ | 0.349 ↑ | 09.3% | 1.26 → | ↑ |
| New York | 41.8 ↑ | 0.315 ↑ | 04.7% ↑ | 1.19 ↗︎ | ⬆︎ |
| France | 15.4 ↓ | 0.608 ↘︎ | 10.7% ↘︎ | 0.56 ↘︎ | ↘︎ |
| Britain | 21.3 ↘︎ | 0.645 ↗︎ | 05.0% ↘︎ | 0.90 ↘︎ | → |
| Tunisia | 09.6 → | 0.453 ↘︎ | ↓ or↘︎ | ||
| Sweden | 50.6 ↗︎ | 0.546 ↑ | 12.9% ↗︎ | ↑or ↘︎ | |
| Germany | 21.6 → | 0.439 ↑ | 09.3% ↗︎ | 1.04 ↗︎ | ⬆︎or → |
| New Zealand | 00.0 → | 0.000 → | 00.1% → | → | |
| Rhein-Neckar | 20.6 → | 0.562 ↑ |
The prospect of a vaccine has given us renewed hope and people, including yours truly, have secretly been making plans for summer or autumn.
But as smart people have remarked before, we will probably never revert to the lives we have led before the pandemic. If only for those businesses that will be gone for good, or some industries that changed (for the better if they have been stark polluters). But we will probably live with precautions for years to come.
The British Broadcasting Company's Visual Journalism Team has put together a nice piece of information that I recommend reading.