Peaking Earlier Than Expected ?
Incidences seem to peak and other numbers should follow, but winter has only started
But even after having peaked, infection numbers will remain high. With deaths projected to go down, there is no imminent danger for the population, although Covid is still a nasty disease for many (and still deadly for some, mostly older and frail). Given the incomplete numbers reported by the national health authorities, it remains hard to predict whether there could another peak. IHME thinks there won't between now and March.
SARS-CoV-2 has lost its threat but it has joined ranks with other, not-very-deadly, respiratory viruses, which have the combined power of knocking out many essential services due to the high number of sick people. Well, the flu is a deadly disease and should not ever be belittled by using the name "flu" for other, mild, respiratory tract infections.
In Washington State's most populous county (with Seattle at its centre), officials now recommend indoor masking as SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses are running rampant (CHS Blog, PDF).
Washington State as a whole, however, sees an easing of the numbers, and mortality is approaching the all-time low of June 2021. Data are incomplete, though, due to a security breach at a large hospital, and thus numbers could look more like those in the rest of the USA. But even there, they seem to point downward.
Washington's virus variants are shifting away from BA to BQ, BN and BF, which, combined, have passed the 50% mark in November. It is possible that these new variants are the reason of the sinking mortality numbers, especially since barely ⅕ of the population has been booster-vaccinated against the BA.4/BA.5 variants.
France's incidence is probably peaking but hospitalisations and mortality are still going up. IHME projects the latter two to peak in January.
Germany's incidence is still climbing but it should soon follow France and numbers should thus come down, possibly in January.
Tunisia has hospital data again! Since this is a weekly report, it will take two more weeks before a trend can be seen. So far, hospital admissions are two orders of magnitude lower than those in the other countries in this blog (which, in addition, report ITU admissions, which are a subset of hospital admissions). If these low numbers can be corroborated by people who work in health care, the virus should indeed pose no danger. People report an uptick in other respiratory infections.
The IHME still thinks that Tunisia's incidence should be 250x higher, and rising.
| Daily Incidence | Daily ITU / ICU | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | Cumulative Excess Death | Mortality Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 20.5 ↗︎ | 1.2 ↗︎ | 0.123 → | 12.1% ↗︎ | 13.7% | ↗︎↘︎ |
| WA State | 11.8 → | 0.4 ↘︎ | 0.081 ↘︎ | 08.9% ↗︎ | 10.6% | ↑↘︎ |
| France | 86.3 → | 1.9 ↗︎ | 0.159 ↗︎ | 26.9% ↘︎ | 10.5% | ↑↘︎ |
| Germany | 38.7 ↗︎ | 1.2 ↗︎ | 0.157 ↗︎ | 30.8% ↑ | 06.8% | ↗︎↘︎ |
| Tunisia | 00.2 ↗︎ | 0.01 | 0.002 ↗︎ | 06.6% ↑ | 14.3% | ↗︎ |
Most of us know that vaccines have a great effect on global health. It is therefore sad to see a growing number of people refusing vaccines. Whether this is the effect of a targeted disinformation campaign by Russia and China to weaken the Western democracies, is debatable. But some of these same people who refuse vaccines would possibly not be here to refuse the vaccines had they not been vaccinated as babies.
But here are interesting findings for those who prefer facts to fiction: Had the US population not be vaccinated, the current 1 million Covid-19 deaths would have been over 4 million (ars technica, PDF). Yes, that is 4x higher!
And the 40 million US hospitalisations would have gone up to 60 million and would have brought down the US health care system and possibly severely damaged the economy.