Tracking the COVID-19-Virus in Germany, the USA, Italy and other hot spots in the world

OMG

LOL

I'm dying here

LOL

 

Officially, in a few short days, China will underwhelm the world and exceed 100,000 total confirmed Covid-19 cases. Yepp, you read that right. 100,000.

LOL. Yeah, riiiiiiiiight....

 

England has just announced 78,000 new cases. Glory!

 

My state, 1,932 new cases yesterday, and today with the day not being over yet, already almost double, 3,755.
There is evidence that Omicron is spreading simultaneously in all areas of the country, instead of going one state to the next.
In the UK apparently cases are doubling every other day. The UK has 80% of the population vaccinated and 34% boosted.
The United States, 60% of the population is vaccinated and 16.18% boosted.
So, given that two doses of the vaccine + a booster deliver at least some protection against Omicron, I expect to see here what I'm seeing already, that Omicron will spread here even faster than in the UK.

It all depends on rate of hospitalization of severe cases. Apparently in South Africa this surge is causing 36% smaller odds of hospitalization than in previous surges.
But the thing is, a smaller percentage of a much bigger total number, will still be a big number, if this thing explodes in the US, getting a large proportion of vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.
This has the potential to overwhelm our hospitals again. By the way, so far I haven't seen an increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations in my hospital. This could change fast, though.

It is a bit frustrating to realize that it is still too early to know, but it is.
One, because it is hard to extrapolate South African data to the United States. They are a much younger country, but also a country with a larger proportion of immune-compromise people due to HIV, and a much smaller rate of vaccination.
Two, because in the US we are still in the middle of Delta, unlike South Africa that is turning all to Omicron.
So, it's hard to know if the surge in my state is, for example, Delta from Thanksgiving gatherings, or already a lot of Omicron.

I do suspect that a lot of Omicron may be contributing to the surge.
See for example the case of Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, a distant area from big centers, in the Finger Lakes region.
Their community on campus has 25,000 people among students, faculty, and employees.
So, they found this week 903 cases of Covid, and in a statement, without further detail, said that a "high" percentage of these were Omicron. They said the vast majority of people with Omicron were fully vaccinated (which is not in itself surprising because they have mandates for fully vaccination of students and faculty/staff) but also some who were boosted were getting it too. For this reason, they abruptly shut down the campus and sent everybody home, quoting that they had to protect the larger Ithaca community that naturally would have a larger incidence of vulnerable people, as opposed to the population of college students who are typically young and healthy.

So, from a handful of cases in a state here, a state there, then a handful in two thirds of the states, we went suddenly to a "high" percentage of Omicron in one small college town kind of in the middle of nowhere. This is not good.

Good news are that it seems like two doses of vaccine + one booster are still holding down the severity of Omicron cases. But we've already seen evidence that the monoclonal antibodies by Eli Lilly and by Regeneron lost pretty much all efficacy against Omicron. The SKF/Vir one remained efficacious (in-vitro tests, so not an effectiveness measurement).

 

To add to this:

How omicron is changing the rules of the covid-19 pandemic - The Washington Post

Yesterday's case-load for the UK was mentioned in this article, which is partially factual and partially panic-machine:



So yes, at the end of the day yesterday, the UK landed at upward of +79,000 cases, a horrifying number, also confirmed by a very sharp rise in +cases in Ireland, which has now entered my tracking. Ireland is now standing at +4,222 per day on the average and was under +500 about 6 weeks ago (data is not all filled in yet, I am swamped with work right now).

But to predict that the UK may hit +1 M per day? Srsly??? This would implicitly mean that first, the UK would need almost 100% positivity by all tests performed daily, day after day after day, a strong indicator that the UK is undertesting. Frankly, of course, naturally, the entire world is undertesting, this much is clear.

Also clear is that hospitalizations are not going up on par with the vast upward curve in +cases attributed to omicron, and the death level is flattening out, which I would certainly interpret as a positive sign. Of course, hospitalizations are a partially lagging indicator and deaths are definitely a lagging indicator, so this could change, but for now, the danger is simply not there.

What we of course cannot even begin to measure is the amount of long-COVID that will happen among survivors who are officially listed as no longer active cases but will have health issues for (potentially) the rest of their lives. And not wanting to piss on anyone's Easter parade, we must also consider that possibility that long-Covid itself could set the stage for an even worse pandemic 10-15 years on down the road.

I think that everyone here knows how much I absolutely despise Donald Trump, supreme serial liar that he is. But in April of 2020 as he postulated that perhaps it would be best to let "Covid-19 wash over the nation", meaning, don't even try to protect people, let it infect us all and get it over with, the idea was of course totally stupid at the time because vaccines were still in the dream-phase back then and the entire point of lockdown in the spring of 2020 was to quash the curve. However, even back then I did read a certain logic in his statment provided we had effective vaccines and long-Covid would not be an issue.

If it should end up that omicron is even more contagious than any of us thought it could possibly be (sure looks like an R-factor considerably higher than 8 to me, which mean we are above measles territory) but the duration of the illness is mild, hospitalizations stay down and with the day after pill, deaths could grind to a halt, I could almost accept Trump's April 2020 logic as solid. But there is still the HUGE unknown about long-Covid, which is saying to me that we all still need every protective measure possible in order to keep people from getting long-Covid.

@CenterField - your thoughts? You are the expert here, not me.

 

Some miscellaneous yet important side-data.

As of 2021-12-015, for the third day in a row, the USA now registers more than 10,000,000 still active Covid-19 cases. This is the first time in the history of the USA and for any nation on earth that a land has reached this statistic, which of course ups the possibility of more C-19 deaths, regardless of which variant, simply due to the sheer massive number of those who are still infected and officially listed at active.

And on the underwhelming side of all of this, China is, as of this very moment, has reached exactly 100,000 total C-19 cases. It just hit the 100,000 line the moment I was typing this posting:



This is, of course, some of the most badly concocted bullshit I have ever seen. The largest nation on this planet, with 1.44 BILLION residents, wants us to believe that almost exactly 24 months after the pandemic began in China itself, that China, currently at rank 113, just hit the 100,000 mark. Laughable.

 

On the nation tracking side, as this year winds down in 15 days and I am seeing some "smaller" nations surging, I have added the following nations to the pre-tracking:

Ireland, Denmark and South Korea.

Also, Bolivia, which was once in the tracking, has re-entered said tracking. I did likewise with Lebanon last week.

This brings me to 50 tracked and 8 pre-tracked nations, which I will likely extend to 60 fully tracked nations for the start of 2022.

Since I will only be recording the numbers once every calendar week starting on 2022-01-002, this tracking will likely stretch out to 70 by the end of 2022 and I bet that most of those nations will also be over the 1,000,000 mark by 2023. Just a gut feeling....

-Stat

 

Ouch

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/09/cdc-chief-omicron-mild-early-data-us-spread-variant

"She said “the disease is mild” in almost all of the cases seen so far, with reported symptoms mainly cough, congestion and fatigue. One person was hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported, CDC officials said."

Mild. I don't give two shits.

 

I'm shocked at the prediction of 1 million cases per day. If this happens, God help us! No health system will be able to cope with that. I'm still crossing my fingers that reports that Omicron cases are milder, remain accurate. There was a study showing that Omicron multiplies very rapidly in the upper respiratory tract but is very sluggish to hit the lungs, unlike its predecessors, which may be why it is so contagious but maybe much less severe.

If Omicron's mutations adapt better to invading upper respiratory cells but it has a smaller predilection for other cells in the body, maybe we won't see as much Long Covid and organ damage from Omicron.

Certainly most viruses evolve in the sense of a survival advantage which often means more infections but less lethal, and maybe Omicron is the blessing in disguise that will confer herd immunity without major Long Covid and organ damage. That would be wonderful.

Trump's strategy at the time was extremely dumb, because we were faced with more lethal variants, we had no vaccines, and no effective treatments.

We're better equipped now with preventative and therapeutic tools, and will be much more equipped when the oral antivirals hit the market because they hit equally all variants present and future regardless of mutations, given that their mechanisms of action do not depend on the virus mutated parts, but rather on processes that all variants need to use to replicate.

In the presence of an attenuated and highly contagious form of the disease + widely available (the widely part won't be here anytime soon; production capacity for the antivirals is very sluggish) oral antivirals, then it makes sense to just relax and say, "so be it, let everybody get infected, take the antivirals, have a case of the sniffles, and acquire natural immunity."

We're not quite there yet without the oral antivirals being approved and widely distributed. We are hopeful that Omicron is indeed milder but not sure yet. If it is milder but not by much and 3-5 weeks after infection people start dying, in smaller proportion but out of a much bigger pool of infected people, then we're in trouble.

I'm nervously watchful. Hopeful in one hand that it will remain mild, and concerned on the other hand about hospital capacity. Time will tell. Meanwhile all that we can do is vaccinate, boost, and try to approve the oral antivirals (and make/distribute them) as soon as possible - and encourage people to mask up, etc., but with pandemic fatigue, the latter is not getting the same traction it once (partially) got.

 

The bolded: that's fascinating. That's the kind of information that I am always looking for. Danke!

 

Yesterday, the UK reported +78,610 cases.

Today, the UK just reported +88,376 cases, a sizeable jump, to say the least.

 

12.5% increase doesn't seem an exponential increase though.

The Denmark case seems more encouraging: while the omicron variant is spreading rapidly in the country, hospitals are not currently overwhelmed by omicron cases, and it really seems to be less severe. But the history isn't long enough yet to draw definitive conclusions, imho.

 

You're welcome. Here is the study:
https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/pres...utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=press_release

 

My husband is growing increasingly nervous about this, given his auto-immune disease. (Psoriatic arthritis.) He's still in the early stages of treatment, so he's been in a perpetual flare up for about 17 months.

Christmas parties start tonight, and we've five places to be in the next eight days. We're both double jabbed + booster.

He's hesitant about going to all these parties, and now, so am I. The NFL has some of the best protocols out there, and players are dropping like flies.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

Don't go. Huge risk at this point. And 5? OMG.
Young healthy students at Cornell who were vaxxed and boosted are getting it.
New Columbia University study shows Omicron evading even boosters.

 

I did not write that it was exponential.

I merely said that it was sizeable.

 

When in doubt, stay home.

 

I read it, thanks again.

This statement at the end was more than thought-provoking:

So, either way, we should all still be at red-alarm. It's really that simple.

 

On Friday, 2021-12-017, the UK reported +93,045 cases, however, my excel table says +92,503, a 542 difference.

On the day before, as the UK reported +88,376 cases, my excel table showed +87,565, an 811 difference.

These things happen (as explained in the disclaimer used in every analysis) because many nations adjust their past totals, often days later, and I do not go chasing ghosts into the past.

Either way, we now see that the UK is averaging +67,313 from the 7-day rolling composite, a sizeable composite jump over the week before, where the 7-day rolling average in +cases was +48,503.

I can indeed see England going over +100,000 daily cases for a while. I cannot see the UK hitting +1,000,000 cases per day, although it's technically possible.

The UK will easily go over 12,000,000 total Covid-19 cases by years end and may actually come near 13,000,000. Wait and see.

 

Happy 4th Sunday in Advent to all of my Christian acquaintances in PF.

 

REFERENCE LINK, FINAL EDITION (DISCLAIMER, online libraries, screenshot overflow links)

Concise COVID-19 WEEKLY analysis: 2021-12-013 (Monday) through 2021-12-019 (Sunday)
(UTC +0, Greenwich = 20:00 UTC -5, East Coast of the USA)
CALENDAR WEEK 50
Worldwide and 'dreadnaught' nations from 5,000,000 COVID-19 cases upwards

THE SIG-FILE EXCEL TRACKING CURRENTLY ENCOMPASSES WORLDWIDE FIGURES + 50 NATIONS
Currently, the figures for worldwide composite figures and 13 of the 50 tracked nations are published here as screenshots on a weekly basis.

WORLDWIDE:
ΏΏ֍֍֍֍֍֍֍***** 275,002,906 *****֍֍֍֍֍֍֍ΏΏ
Our world exceeded 271, 272, 273, 274 & 275 million total Covid-19 cases during this last week
+4,585,735 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 655,105 = 454.9 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+48,382 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 6,912 = 4.8 new deaths every minute, tendency: falling
50-NATION TRACKING: USA & UK EXCEEDED THE NEXT MILLION MARK
CHINA EXCEEDED 100,000 TOTAL C-19 CASES, 113th NATION TO DO SO, A LAUGHABLE STATISTIC
FOR THE OTHER MAJOR RUBRIK CHANGES DURING THIS TIME, SEE RUBRIK TABLE BELOW
-----------------------------------------​

The Omikron-wave has hit the UK (and Ireland and Denmark as well) and has taken foot in France and Germany. Most large 1st-world nations are now bracing for a terrible January 2022 to come, plain and simple.






The first two screenshots of the Worldwide figures (above) represents all 50 nations now being tracked daily by me. See: online excel-table
For additional screenshots of the worldwide figures, please use the "Reference Link" (top of analysis)

USA:
֍֍֍֍* 51,765,714 *֍֍֍֍֍
THE USA EXCEEDED 51,000,000 TOTAL COVID-19 CASES ON 2021-12-13
THE USA WILL EXCEED 52,000,000 TOTAL COVID-19 CASES IN THE NEXT DAYS
THE USA LEADS WORLDWIDE IN BOTH AVERAGE +CASES & +DEATHS
+964,259 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 137,751 = 95.7 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+9,367 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 1,338 = 0.9 death every minute, tendency: slightly rising
​

INDIA:
֍֍֍**** 34,746,838 ****֍֍֍
+48,978 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 6,997 = 4.9 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+1,918 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 274 = 0.2 deaths every minute, tendency: steady​

BRAZIL:
֍֍** 22,213,762 **֍֍
IS BRAZIL TESTING FOR COVID-19 ANYMORE AT ALL?
+23,895 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 3,414 = 2.4 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply falling
+897 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 128 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

UK:
֍* 11,361,387 *֍
THE UK EXCEEDED 11,000,000 TOTAL CONFIRMED CASES ON 2021-12-015
THE OMIKRON-WAVE HAS SLAMMED INTO THE UK WITH FULL FORCE
+541,872 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 77,410 = 53.7 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+779 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 111 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

RUSSIA:
֍ 10,214,790 ֍
+197,894 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 28,271 = 19.6 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+7,720 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 1,103 = 0.8 deaths every minute, tendency: slightly falling
​

TURKEY:
********* 9,171,119 *********
+130,940 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 18,706 = 13.0 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+1,264 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 181 = 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: slightly falling
​

FRANCE:
******** 8,625,849 ********
+367,157 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 52,451 = 33.9 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+1062 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 152 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: rising
​

GERMANY:
****** 6,812,736 ******
GERMANY HAS CRESTED ITS DELTA-WAVE & IS NOW BRACING FOR THE OMIKRON-WAVE
+281,824 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 40,261 = 28.0 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+2,632 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 376 = 0.3 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

IRAN:
****** 6,170,979 ******
+16,166 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 2,309 = 1.6 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+361 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 52 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

SPAIN:
***** 5,455,527 *****
SPAIN SURPASSED ARGENTINA IN THE RANKINGS THIS LAST WEEK
+165,337 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 23,620 = 16.4 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+327 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 47 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

ARGENTINA:
***** 5,389,707 *****
+31,252 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 4,465 = 3.1 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+132 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 19 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

ITALY:
***** 5,389,155 *****
+163,638 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 23,377 = 16.2 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+810 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 116 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: rising
​

COLOMBIA:
***** 5,107,323 *****
+13,789 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 1,970 = 1.4 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+351 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 50 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

 

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has tested positive for C-19.

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has tested positive for C-19.

 

The yearly world forum in Davos has been postponed because of C-19.