Analysis – Saturday, 18 September 2021

Current Projections Call For Hot Winter
USA - stagnating at high level
Britain - increasing slowly but steadily
EU - currently good but projected to get worse

The only country with good outlook in ICU and death numbers, as well as vaccination progress is the one that has had it bad throughout the summer: Tunisia. Even their test-positive rate has started to go below 10% (it has been above 20% for the last year).

The USA is struggling with overflowing ICU occupancy (ars technica). High ICU (ITU) numbers trigger growing death numbers a few weeks later. 

Most European countries will, in most likelihood, be spared the fate of triage, particularly those with high and still growing vaccination rates, such as Spain or Denmark.

Germany, however is projected to exceed US numbers this winter. The government could swiftly implement a strict policy excluding unvaccinated from public life (such as Italy or France have done), but that would come to fruition only by late November (because it takes up to two months from first jab to full vaccination) and would thus come too late to make a big impact. Ethical concerns however, deeply rooted in the German psyche, will delay the obvious and a vaccination rate as high as the current Danish one (75%) might thus not even be reached by year's end. It is bitter to hear trade unions shout that they don't want to give up their right to their data (by letting their employer know if they are vaccinated); because, after all, same unions will be the first to demand subsidies should another lockdown become unavoidable.

From next week on, the Spanish data and the graph will no longer be included but I shall keep referring to EU countries with good or bad performance, which will include Spain.