Things Are Looking Good, but …
... only where enough vaccine is available and restrictions remain in place
… the new Indian variants could set us back (but we don't know yet)
The USA and Britain are the vaccination frontrunners and are bracing to getting back to normal. The EU can expect to be at the same level in a few weeks. But the Indian variant is of great concern. In Britain, where the variant is making inroads, incidence is on the rise again and hospital admissions are feared to follow suit, which would delay further relaxations of measures (BBC). Incidentally, Germany has just declared the UK a hotspot, which means travel restrictions.
Nations with too little vaccine will take a lot longer to get there, and the Indian variant could delay this even further. Tunisia and Brazil are examples. And other counties on the Indian subcontinent will be ravaged for at least until summer before vaccines and renewed measures can take effect.
In the USA, the CDC recommend that vaccinated people no longer be required to wear masks (CNN). It has some potential to get the vaccination rate up. On the other hand, it sends the message that the pandemic is over and, because this is an honour system, unvaccinated people could now unmask everywhere, in which case there could be a renewed surge in incidence, and in the light of the Indian variants, this is a much more likely scenario. And what about vaccinated people with pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes, lung or heart disease? We still do not know for sure if they might not develop a severe disease if infected. The CDC might risk throwing them under the bus. The next weeks will tell.
| Daily Infections | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | R value | Average Excess Death | Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 29.7 ↗︎ | 0.919 ↘︎ | 1.00 ↗︎ | 25.8 % | ↗︎↘︎ | |
| USA | 10.6 ↘︎ | 0.188 ↘︎ | 04.6 % ↘︎ | 0.87 ↘︎ | 17.0 % | ↘︎ |
| WA State | 17.5 → | 0.107 ↘︎ | 07.9 % ↗︎ | 0.92 ↘︎ | 09.2 % | ↘︎ |
| France | 21.5 ↘︎ | 0.282 ↘︎ | 04.7 % ↓ | 0.74 ↓ | 16.3 % | ↘︎ |
| Sweden | 41.5 ↘︎ | 0.144 ↘︎ | 09.7 % ↓ | 1.03 → | 12.7 % | ↘︎ |
| Britain | 03.3 ↗︎ | 0.015 ↓ | 00.2 % → | 0.95 ↗︎ | 17.0 % | ↓ |
| Germany | 12.2 ↘︎ | 0.236 ↘︎ | 07.7 % ↓ | 0.87 → | 07.4 % | ↘︎ |
| Tunisia | 08.5 ↘︎ | 0.542 ↘︎ | 23.7 % ↘︎ | 0.89 ↘︎ | 13.5 % | ↘︎↗︎ ↘︎ |
| New Zealand | 00.1 → | 0.000 → | 00.0 % ↘︎ | 1.04 ↓ | 00.1 % | → |
| India | 25.7 ↗︎ | 0.289 ↗︎ | 22.4 % ↑ | 1.08 ↓ | 03.6 % | ↘︎ |
Covid was preventable. This is the summary from a report by an independent review panel set up by the WHO (and reported by the BBC, with my own PDF should the link not work).
The report blames the WHO for having declared a pandemic one week too late, which allowed the virus to spread outside China. And it blames the USA and Europe for having wasted the entire month of February.
So, while this is nothing new (this blog brought up the same issues over a year ago), it makes recommendations to prevent future pandemics (Here is the PDF of the actual report).
Let's hope that the world will listen this time. Because the next pandemic is waiting around the corner.