US incidence with 80% masking vs current masking
If up to 80% of the US population were to use their mask in public indoor and crowded outdoor places right now, the projected incidence could be reduced by a factor 10-20.
On And On
Like a dear in the headlight, we are helplessly staring a climbing numbers
A new wave is in the making and health authorities have fewer data material at their disposition than ever before. Spain is flying completely blind. Britain has not published hospitalisation data nor the number of tests performed in 6 weeks. Germany has halted its free tests. As a result, the gap between reported and (estimated) actual numbers widens in most countries. In additions, predictions become unreliable, such as the ones by IHME that I use.
Corona numbers have largely disappeared from the news and most people will thus find out how bad this summer wave really is, when they see more and more Covid cases around them.
It is not too late for state intervention. As an example, a mask mandate would save 10 000 lives in the USA in the coming three months (see Remarks below), and other countries will see similar effects.
Europe has learnt its lesson from Covid and applies it to other viral diseases, such as the swine flu or monkey pox. Not. Because here too, religion has replaced science and people resort to hoping (or praying) that they (or their farm) will be spared.
| Daily Incidence | Daily ITU | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | Cumulative Excess Death | Death Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 036.5 ↗︎ | 0.9 ↗︎ | 0.088 → | 21.3% → | 15.3% | ↘︎ |
| WA State | 036.9 ↗︎ | 1.0 ↗︎ | 0.126 ↘︎ | 14.6% ↓ | 11.3% | ↘︎ |
| Britain | 031.8 ↑ | 0.3 | 0.103 ↑ | 03.3% | 12.4% | ↓ |
| France | 148.1 ↑ | 1.3 → | 0.057 ↘︎ | 29.6% ↑ | 11.8% | ↘︎ |
| Germany | 106.8 ↗︎ | 1.1 ↗︎ | 0.096 → | 51.3% | 07.2% | ↓ |
| Tunisia | 006.6 ↑ | 0.2 | 0.022 ↗︎ | 34.8% ↑ | 16.8% | ↗︎ |
Since so many people around me are unmasked, here is a statistic (popup) that shows what would happen if the US population went from the current 10% masking to 80% (data by IHME):
Between now and late September, infection rate would be down 10-20x. Each day 200 000 people would not get sick (a reduction from the current ~200K to ~20K new infections per day).
And 10 000 lives would be spared. For comparison: deadly road accidents cause ~10 000 US deaths in the same 3-month period.
The following might sound harsh but people who don't mask in these days are responsible for making this pandemic worse. This is be very much akin to people going over the speed limit and thus risking deadly accidents (deadly mostly for others, that is, namely the vulnerable pedestrians).
And we know that, once you sit behind a wheel, the car controls how you drive because you almost always go too fast. For humanity is not really capable of self-restraint (some individuals are). This is why we have traffic laws and we punish people who don't follow them.
So why do we still debate whether we should have pandemic rules and punish those who don't follow them?