Dark clouds on the horizon
New variants could have a greater impact than expected.
While numbers are clearly pointing in the right direction and heat maps changing to nicer colours, there is a nagging feeling of something not being right. Maybe it is the fact that in some countries the downward trends have slowed down. Or that death numbers are falling while incidences go up again. Or that some R values are bouncing back after their drop. Even New Zealand saw a handful new cases in Wellington (but they dealt with them the right way by shutting down the entire city).
Brazil is stagnant. Washington State could be reverting its good trend. Sweden's and France's incidence is growing. Germany's decrease in incidence is slowing down. On the other hand, California, New York State and even France are beating bad death predictions but their numbers remain high.
This is not yet the time to relax safety rules.
| Daily Infections | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | R value | Average Excess Death | Projection (last week) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 21.5 ↗︎ | 0.495 ↗︎ | 1.01 ↘︎ | 17.9% | → | |
| US minus 3 | 19.4 ↘︎ | 0.910 → | 07.3% ↑ | 0.86 → | 16.5% | ↘︎ |
| California | 17.0 ↓ | 0.847 ↘︎ | 03.1% ↓ | 0.78 ↘︎ | 17.2% | ↘︎↗︎↘︎ |
| Washington | 12.7 ↗︎ | 0.355 ↗︎ | 03.2% ↓ | 0.88 ↗︎ | 09.7% | |
| New York | 38.0 ↘︎ | 0.582 ↘︎ | 03.6% ↘︎ | 0.91 ↘︎ | 24.4% | ↘︎↗︎↘︎ |
| France | 28.4 ↗︎ | 0.536 ↗︎ | 06.0% → | 0.93 ↘︎ | 15.6% | ↗︎↘︎ |
| Britain | 16.5 ↘︎ | 0.728 ↘︎ | 02.2% → | 0.75 → | 19.6% | ↘︎ |
| Tunisia | 06.4 ↘︎ | 0.311 ↘︎ | 18.4% ↓ | 1.13 ↓ | 11.1% | ↘︎ |
| Sweden | 32.2 ↗︎ | 0.313 ↘︎ | 10.4% → | 1.19 ↓ | 13.9% | →↘︎ |
| Germany | 08.7 ↘︎ | 0.508 ↘︎ | 04.7% ↓ | 1.01 ↑ | 07.1% | ↘︎ |
| New Zealand | 00.0 → | 0.000 → | 00.0% → | 1.08 ↑ | 00.1% | → |
| Rhein-Neckar | 07.2 ↘︎ | 0.147 ↓ | 06.8% |
Remarks On Local PCR Testing
A friend of mine is a pilot. His airline flies to countries with strict quarantine rules. China has once kept one of their pilots in quarantine and it took company leadership weeks to get him back. Since then, the company has established testing equipment in their hubs. Pilots now get tested before they fly and probably in between too.
And this is not the rapid home test, which is based on the viral protein, no, this is the sensitive PCR test with immediate result.
I was flabbergasted. A relatively small airline is able to deploy PCR testing machines. And local authorities are not?
Our governments spent billions if not trillions of dollars to save our economies. Volkswagen received several billions in subsidies while still making a profit. And they had no money for PCR machines?
I worked with PCR for most of my life and I know the price of one reaction. It is far less than what big laboratories charge.
Imagine if one of the slaughter factories had tested their employees (or Amazon their distribution centre workers) every day using such machines and the governments would have supported those who tested positive to that they could stay home and not infect others. Imagine if the car industry had switched their production to PCR machines for a couple of months and other companies had taken on production of swabs, reaction tubes and reaction reagents. And then imagine, every municipality, every company, every airport, every retirement home had deployed one, two or as many of them as would have been needed to test all people every day.
Imagine.