Analysis – Saturday, 3 April 2021

It's Gonna Get Worse Before It Gets Better

France is probably already reaching the top of the bad, seeing a slowdown of the increase.

The new, more aggressive virus variants are spreading everywhere and while people often call this a third (EU) or fourth (USA) wave, this are only peaks. A real new virus wave necessitates a new variant or an intervening period with almost no virus present in the population, and the latter was never the case. We are thus now experiencing a second wave. And we are only slowly discovering the parameters the new variants are dictating.

Incidence was thus going up almost everywhere except in Britain, but here, the decrease has markedly slowed down since partial opening in early March, and in New Zealand, which does a formidable and exhausting job of keeping new virus imports under control. On the other end of the spectrum sits Brazil where numbers have never been low since the beginning of the pandemic and they are still increasing, particularly the fatalities. But in spite of a poor vaccination rate and a president who seems to be siding with the virus, incidence is coming down.

Fatalities were impacted by the renewed surge in positively-tested people. In regions with too little vaccination, deaths were increasing but are predicted to fall by the end of April. This is likely to be true, especially with more vaccine coming (Germany, France, Sweden) or with vaccination actually being given to the vulnerable instead to the ones with money or power (Tunisia). In the USA, deaths could be plateauing until they are projected to fall in May, and this is in spite of a good overall vaccination rate. With a country that big and diverse, death numbers might as well go up, particularly in those U.S. states where distancing measures, or even the mask mandate, were relaxed prematurely. Washington State and Britain have both vaccinated one third of their populations with at least one jab and their death rates were thus falling, and very fast so.

Testing is going well in Britain and the US. France has caught up tremendously, Germany is trailing and has been surpassed by Sweden and Tunisia is still doing a very poor job. The lower the testing rate the more undiscovered cases are in the population. In other words, Germany's real incidence is likely to be even worse than it already is and Tunisia's could be twice as high.

Projections have been inaccurate during the last weeks although all countries should be seeing falling death (and ICU) rates in May. Curiously, in their home state of Washington, the IHME predicts a rise in deaths until the end of April, all the while numbers are much lower and tending to go to zero.

Vaccination in the front-runner Israel is progressing only slowly because now they are reaching the population of the sceptics. The same fate will await other countries and without some form of pressure, herd immunity cannot be reached. Since mandatory vaccination is extremely unpopular, and could damage social peace, the most likely option will be incentives, e.g. permission to travel, visit shows, bars or restaurants. 

Note: California and New York State will no longer be followed owing to difficulties acquiring accurate data over the entire reporting period. As a consequence, I will only report on the the entire USA and on Washington State.