Analysis – 19 December 2020

This holiday season will be truly reflective. And just a little longer than in prior years.
NEW: the graphs now show projections for daily deaths (simplified from IHME)

All of the countries and regions on my blog have a good outlook for early 2021 but some will be faced with an increased burden of hospitalised persons and of fatalities.

This is particularly true for California where incidence numbers are going through the roof and, to a lesser degree, Washington State. The latter has the most yellow of all States on the U.S. incidence map, which is either testimony to good management or poor data reporting. Given the issues from 5 December, when 90 deaths were removed from the statistics (roughly one week of fatalities at that time) and repeated data inconsistencies, as well as an increasing death rate, I am not sure the situation is as good as it looks on paper. New York State's incidence could be plateauing soon and deaths, while also increasing, are projected to have peaked by mid January. The rest of the U.S. could also have their deaths spike in mid January, with ICU saturation becoming more frequent until February. The vaccination effort will be hampered by a deep distrust of the black population in "white" medicine (for very valid reasons rooted in racism). As a consequence, a third of the African Americans will potentially not get vaccinated.

Germany's daily deaths have surpassed any other nation on my blog, only the U.S. minus CA,NY,WA being worse. After their lockdown "light" did not prevent the irresponsible people from satisfying their egotism, a stricter lockdown was imposed, and other European countries have already done so or will soon. A couple of weeks ago, I predicted that, come January, Germany's sick will be air lifted to France but the Gauls demonstrated again their disdain for sticking to rules, which resulted in a re-surge of their numbers. Therefore I am not sure if they will have extra ICU capacity But other countries might..

Sweden, as predicted, is trailing Germany by just a little in deaths but their incidence is so bad that even the king, in an unusual statement, acknowledged that their Corona politics had been a disaster. They should come out of it before Germany though. Britain has a good outlook but their previous nonchalance has permitted the virus to seep deeply into society and now, any weakening of the restrictions will trigger a swift uptick of the numbers. Tunisia is doing better for now, but numbers fall too slowly and vaccination might start only in late Summer, a further blow for their tourism industry.

Brazil, while defying IHME predictions by pushing numbers up, remains to have some of the lowest values in my list but it will probably be April or May before daily deaths have again reached the low point they had in November.