Analysis – Saturday, 12 June 2021

The rich and careless need to brace themselves for another surge

The pandemic is far from over, as much as we make ourselves believe

The USA is vaccinating less (since mid April) and also performing fewer tests (more recently). If this pattern continues, two bad things will happen: the delta variant will expand in the non-vaccinated population and we will know less about who is infected. It looks as if my prediction from a month ago were to come true and Covid will become endemic in North America. I expect numbers to bottom out at levels not much lower than the current ones.

In Washington State, newly reported deaths are consistently backdated by several weeks, which results in the steep drop of the curve and thus a huge difference to the death numbers projected by IMHE (the pink dotted line). Of all nations I have observed to date, WA is alone in doing such aggressive backdating. Also worth mentioning: WA State's daily deaths have never gone below 0.06 per 100K, and I therefore assume that IHME's numbers are probably closer to reality. 

Europe might have better testing and vaccination rates than the USA but the hurried return to normality combined with the spreading of the delta variant will put a strain on the decline of the numbers. Front runner Britain is now seeing a re-surge of the ICU population but only a slight increase in deaths, which is owed to vaccination of the vulnerable population. Germany and France should therefore expect numbers to go up in the coming weeks. Indeed, Germany's decline of the incidence has already slowed down.

Tunisia's outlook has not changed but it has considerably ramped up vaccination, which is going to push death numbers down again.