French Oversea Regions Have Lower Incidence
The last four regions in the list are former colonies turned overseas regions. Their GDP is much lower of regions in metropolitan France and many more people live in poverty.
Moving Into Pandemic Phase ?
German Vaccination Authority Just Said So
A pandemic situation can be defined as a disease that meets an immunologically naïve population and spreads globally. Commonly, it is the World Health Organisation that calls a pandemic, and it did so in 2020 for Covid-19. It has not yet declared it having become endemic, although some influential people have called for it.
An endemic situation is defined by a disease that has itself established in a region with a relatively constant number of infected people and is here to stay. This is what the German vaccination commission has said (to the chagrin of the German health minister). An endemic situation also means that the population has largely mounted an immune protection and that most infections result in relatively mild disease. The commission concluded by saying that we should focus on the original goal of avoidance of serious diseases. In the end, nothing much changes for the vulnerable population, other than that they will be more at risk as precautions are being scrapped.
This said, Germany and France, the two brothers from a different mother, have reached or passed their peak numbers. The current decline should reverse its course when it becomes cold enough for more people to be indoors.
The USA seems to be behind Europe since it has not yet had its equivalent of the autumn peak. But there are signs for an upswing. The same is true for Washington State. It may very well be that oscillating incidence numbers at a relatively high level, paired with a mortality at around 0.1 per 100 000 is the new normal. The latest IHME projections, which look as if they were closer to reality this time, do predict not much of a change until late January.
Tunisia might see the downward trend of its incidence come to a halt. The R-value has also been inching up towards 1 and the freshly published projections seem to indicate so as well. Numbers are very low though and even if they were to go up, this new peak would probably not overwhelm the health care system.
Washington State has moved to weekly reporting (albeit with data for all work days) and they report their numbers on Wednesdays. With my Saturday reporting, their numbers will soon be behind by a few days, not unlike Tunisian numbers.
Last week I remarked on Tunisias low numbers and speculated on the reason for it. Looking at French Corona incidence, the same tendency can be seen: the, poorer, overseas regions, which have many of the indicators of developing countries, have much lower Corona numbers than the motherland.
With Europe, and in it the two most prosperous nations Germany and France, displaying infection numbers that are going up and down at a rather high level, and unable to get their mortality down, it now looks as if the poorer nations are having the last laugh.