Good Summer
The rest is uncertain
The new prognosis by IHME is out telling us that the pandemic remains on its way out, albeit with a delay of several weeks.The only surprise: Germany is the winner among the countries on my list. The USA and Britain will need to live with a high number of infections for months to come and Spain, France, Washington State and Tunisia are not doing too poorly.
Globally the prediction is even better. Global numbers are driven by the world's most populous country, China. It will be the last country to get out of the pandemic with incidence peaking in May followed by a mortality peak in June.
Another prognosis: without more vaccination – and a will to get refresher jabs in autumn – the cold period could be yet another groundhog day. Also see Remarks below.
Tunisia is so confident about having beaten Covid-19 that they are ditching their daily updates and report one weekly number for each of the three main parameters on Wednesdays (excluding vaccination data so far). Trends will therefore harder to spot. Whether this was a wise decision remains to be seen.
| Daily Incidence | Daily ICU | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | Cumulative Excess Death | Death Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 009.6 → | 1.0 ↓ | 0.248 → | 03.7 % ↓ | 16.7 % | ↘︎ |
| WA State | 011.3 ↘︎ | 0.7 ↘︎ | 0.152 ↘︎ | 11.9 % | ↘︎ | |
| Britain | 126.8 ↗︎ | 0.4 ↗︎ | 0.199 ↗︎ | 11.4 % ↑ | 12.8 % | ↘︎ |
| France | 175.1 ↗︎ | 2.4 ↘︎ | 0.154 ↘︎ | 28.8 % ↑ | 12.6 % | ↘︎ |
| Germany | 155.0 ↘︎ | 2.8 ↗︎ | 0.152 ↓ | 64.4 % ↑ | 07.4 % | ↓ |
| Tunisia | 004.8 ↓ | 0.6 ↓ | 0.120 ↘︎ | 15.5 % ↓ | 18.7 % | ↘︎ |
In a recent study Austrian researchers demonstrate that omicron infections do not provide broad immunity against coronavirus variants. It also bolsters earlier findings that past coronavirus infections don't provide the same consistent and high levels of protection as vaccination.
This study, albeit small, adds to prior findings that vaccination is the only way to protect our health care systems.
(On a side note, this study is bad news for China. Should their homegrown vaccines indeed be as bad as rumoured, the population could be even less prepared for surges caused by new variants and, should the zero-Covid strategy continue, massive lockdowns would become the norm.)