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

Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) has tested positive for Covid-19.

 

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and most of his family have tested postitive for Covid-19.

 

On 2021-12-020, for the first time in a long time, Israel registered more than +1,000 fresh C19 infections, while Canada, also for the first time in a very long time, registered more than +10,000 fresh infections. Also, for the first time in it's Covid-19 history, Denmark exceeded +10,000 daily fresh infections. Also, Belgium exceeded 2,000,000 total Covid-19 cases (represents 17.2% of the entire belgian population). Also, on 2021-12-020, the USA exceeded 52,000,000 total confirmed Covid-19 cases.

Yesterday, on 2021-12-021 (Winter Solstice), the Netherlands exceeded 3,000,000 total confirmed Covid-19 cases (represents 17.3% of the netherlandic population - see the similarity to Belgium?) and Russia was on the cusp of 300,000 total Covid-19 deaths, which I see, now that Russia has already reported in for today, 2021-12-022, Russia has achieved an now stands at 300,269 total C-19 dead in that country.

A lot is happening under the surface of the statistics as the Delta wave will surely turn into a far more massive Omikron wave.

 

In early December, I prognosticated that we would likely end the year with 42 nations over the 1,000,000 mark, with Greece having been the 42nd nation to acheive that infamous marker on 2021-12-012, ten days ago. That prognostication was correct and based purely on the running math.

For intstance, although there are now 4 nations in the 900,000 to 1,000,000 zone (Kazakhstan, Cuba, Morocco and Georgia), here is why it is very unlikely that further nations will exceed the million mark in this year, but there will be some nations to do this in Q1 of 2022. Here the stats from yesterday, 2021-12-021:



Here you see the nations from rank 43 to rank 64, and then also the countries at rank 68 and 89, respectively. Countries that are bolded are in my tracking or pre-tracking (which, as of 2022 will simply be called my tracking). Nations in green are nations that were once in the tracking but fell out of said (Tunisia, Guatemala, Sri Lanks, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador and Paraguay). Nations in black are nations I have not yet tracked.

Now, here the same table, sorted according to the number of days before each nation (at its current pace) would reach 1,000,000:



It is looking very much as if Georgia, Kazakhstan, Denmark, Slovakia, S. Korea and Ireland will cross over the 1,000,000 mark within Q1 of next year, but even Croatia and Australia may get there as well.

And if Omikron hits as hard as our scientists are saying, then this list could swell considerably.

For nations not in my tracking, I have no calculated 7-day rolling average to go on, I just took the value from 2021-12-021, which is also why Australia is very likely to have a 7-day average far higher than it's one day Tuesday value.

I hope this information was helpful to the PF community.

-Stat

PS. Later in the day I will write about what Germany is pre-emptively planning to do about Omikron.

 

Today, 2021-12-022, the UK, for the first time in its C-19 history, clocked in at over +100,000 fresh infections.

Also, on this day, Poland exceeded 4,000,000 total confirmed Covid-19 cases (which represents 15.1% of the polish population, not far from the percentages I mentioned for both Netherlands and Belgium earlier today).

 

Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) has tested positive for Covid-19.

 

The Omikron wave in South Africa is already starting to abate:



The peak 7-day rolling average was reached on Friday, 2021-12-014 and since then the average is already -5,000 less than on last Friday. At this rate, by year's end, S. Africa's daily C-19 haul should go from +5 digits to +4 digits. And it's not because that nation is testing less. You can see from the testing average that that nation is actually testing more. Considerably more, to be more exact.

-Stat

 

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) has tested positive for Covid-19.

 

So, I went back on worldometers to really get a handle on the situation around the world, and as we kind of identified on this topic last year: I call BS on the Chinese. As of today 11/23/2021 they claim 100,644 cases for 160 million tests! That's not even 0.1/10th! I'm calling bullshit. For points of comparison, South Korea/Japan(nearly neighboring countries in Asia) more than double or triple China's numbers! And no matter how gross we American habits may be, I still find it hard to believe that we're like 10-20 times worse than these countries in terms of persons infected.

Two years ago, when the virus first came to the world there was much we don't know. Two years later, there's still so much we don't know.

 

Not only did the UK shoot over +100,000 fresh infections in one day yesterday, 2021-12-022, a first for that country, France clocked in at +84,272 new cases and Spain at +60,041, taking rank 3 and 4 in the daily +cases rubrik, after the USA (+257,130, according to my excel table) and the UK. This is the highest value for France since 2021-04-004, more than 8 months ago, and also the highest value for Spain since 2021-01-021, 11 full months ago.

Also, on 2021-12-022, the UAE clocked in at over +1,000 fresh cases for the first time since 2021-08-023, four months ago.

We are seeing a massive climb in cases almost everywhere, or better put, everywhere where people are actually testing, which they are absolutely not in Brasil or Kazakhstan, for instance.

And although it is currently only at 273,075 total confirmed Covid-19 cases and rank 87, I have included Australia in the tracking as of today as it is obviously on a track very similar to what I saw happening in Vietnam before that country even cracked the 100,000 mark and then 2.5 months later sprang over the million-fence (Vietnam is now close to 1.6 million and experiencing a new surge, very likely Omikron).

Our world in it's entirety jumped around +900,000 cases yesterday, a horrifying statistic when you consider that just 3 weeks ago, on 2021-12-001, our world was averaging +575,552 cases per day. In just one week, we may be at double the statistic from December 1, 2021.....

 

Today, 2021-12-023, the UK clocked in at +119,789 fresh C19 infections. This is just the 2nd day over the +100,000 mark in the UK and already they are pushing +120,000.

France just clocked in at +91,608 fresh C-19 infections, the 2nd highest take of all of France's history to date, behind the number from 2021-04-008.

That being said, at current, average deaths (7-day rolling avg.) are almost exactly where they were one week ago. Today = +112 daily deaths, one week ago = +115 daily deaths. However, let's not forget that deaths are a lagging indicator in the Covid-19 tracking.

It should also be noted that at +44,595 cases, Italy just recorded by far the largest daily C-19 +case haul in all of its C19 history to date and will probably be rank 5 today when all is said and done.

In Portugal, for this first time since 2021-01-030, almost 11 months ago, Portugal clocked in with over +10,000 fresh infections (+10,549, to be exact). The most disheartening thing to get from this figure is that Portugal had almost completely conquered Covid and also claimed to be very close to 100% vaccinated. If it is so that Portugal was really vaccinated across the entire board, then this can only mean oodles and oodles of breakthrough infections.

In Germany, the new Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, put together an advisory committee of 17 scientists, most of them virologists. What is interesting about this is that Scholz deliberately called on the best virologists who often do not agree with each other about the pandemic at all, but all 17 put out a document with measures aimed at blunting the Omikron wave when it hits Germany and here all 17 are in strong agreement with each other. Although the UK, Ireland, Denmark, the Benelux nations, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy are already in the Omikron wave, Germany is not - yet.

The document calls for heavy restrictions for both the unvaccinated AND the vaccinated in Germany starting on Tuesday, December 28th.

-People can meet in groups of no more than 10 people.
-Mask requirements continue
-Large stadium events are all cancelled
-Bars and discos must close
-The jury is still out as to whether fitness centers should close or not.
-New Years fireworks displays and the private use of fireworks on New Years Eve and through the New Year will be prohibited.
-complete lockdown is not in the picture yet, but it is being contemplated.

Some are calling for an national vaccination mandate, but a number of virologists are against this, including one of my favorites, Streek, who is using the simple logic that the current vaccines are probably not going to cover the next variants once omikron has left the stage. Plus, a number of constitutional scholars in Germany don't think that such a law would pass through their version of a supreme court, were the law to be challenged (it would be, instantly). I personally am for a vaccine mandate for all, but I see the reasons as to why it may be unfeasable.

Here's the kicker to all of this: Germany is the very first country in the world to express real fear that the wave, when it hits, may be so large and deadly that it will knock out too many workers that are part of the infrastructure-fabric of that nation (police, firefighters, dispatchers, hospital workers, truckers, etc), so Germany is devising contingency plans for getting the nation through a number of weeks should this scenario become reality. Germany is acting proactively, though I doubt it will be enough. If England can go from an average of +44,000 daily cases at the beginning of this month to pushing on +100,000 cases per day 3 weeks later, just imagine what may happen in Germany, which has almost 16,000,000 more residents than the UK and those people are generally living closer to each other.

@CenterField - your thoughts?

 

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) has tested positive for Covid-19.

 

My thoughts are that containment measures will be useless against Omicron. It's just too infectious. Politicians (and even ad-hoc committees of virologists they nominate) will want to appear like they're doing something, but Omicron will run over any measures, sooner or (a tiny bit) later. Omicron is the second most infectious virus in the history of humankind. We won't stop it.

There's been growing evidence that it is milder, but still, of the 3 mechanisms of death in Covid-19, 2 relate to the virus itself (viral pneumonia, and multiple organ damage via endothelial destruction), but one relates to the host: the over-reaction of the immune system that triggers cytokine storms. So even it the virus is milder and less prone to causing the first two, I do expect that some people will still die of Omicron thanks to the third mechanism. In smaller proportion than other variants, but the thing is, as you, a statistician knows, a small percentage of a huge number can perfectly be a larger absolute number than a larger percentage of a smaller number.

I think the key is that Pfizer has just had Paxlovid authorized for emergency use in the US, for everybody who is older than 12, heavier than 88 pounds, and has one or more morbid conditions that make the person prone to severe Covid-19. Pfizer is waiving the patent rights for poor and mid-income countries. I think now we should focus on producing the oral antivirals more than anything else. Most world vaccines (including AstraZeneca, J&J, Sputnik V, CoronaVac, and the other Chinese vaccines) seem to be useless against Omicron.

The antivirals on the other hand, targeting the polymerase that ALL variants need and is not subject to mutations, will curb Delta, Omicron, and all future variants, no doubt. So they should be massively produced.

I also think that if Omicron confers good immunity against Omicron itself, once it runs over the population, we may for the first time have viable herd immunity in most places. This, together with the antivirals, may dictate the beginning of the end of the pandemic phase of the SARS-CoV-2 global outbreak. Then this will enter endemic phase, where we'll get an updated shot every year and if we still catch it, we'll take oral antivirals.

Yes, there is a potential for infrastructure breakdown. Especially in healthcare, one third of us might be knocked out from the workforce by catching Omicron from our patients. And so on for other sectors. The German government is right in planning for this.

But I also think that the Omicron wave will burn out faster than previous waves, given how contagious it is. It will come, infect everybody, then run out of new people to infect, and fade.

 

Better to be prepared for something that won’t happen, than back the wrong horse.

 

This was extremely helpful information and I was thinking in many ways along similar lines, but without the nitty gritty of your expertise.

Thanks for your input.

 

Yesterday, Thursday, 2021-12-023, our world clocked in with more than +1,000,000 fresh infections in one day:



The WorldOMeter website shows slightly less than +1,000,000 because a number of cases were shunted into the past, but even WorldOMeter was very close to +1,000,000:



This is not the first time that the world showed +1,000,000 on my excel table: on 2021-12-010, as Turkey corrected its figures and added around +800,000 cases in one day, jumping wildly over the 1,000,000 barrier, my excel table showed considerably more than +1,000,000 in one single day but the difference here is that this +million number is without massive numerical corrections into the past.

Also fascinating to see is the constellation of nations that had over +1,000 new cases on this day (there were 62 such nations):



Yesterday, in a posting, I projected that Spain would likely be rank 4 or 5 in +cases, and indeed, that was the case. Spain just blew way past its highest +case load from the last huge wave one year ago.

Look at some of the countries we rarely talk about that clocked in over the +1,000,000 mark:

Ghana, Angola, Malawi, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, DRC, Finnland, Kenya, Ethopia and Botswana. You can see that almost all of the nations I just listed that we rarely talk about are all in Africa, a sure sign that Africa has now entered the Omikron wave.

-Stat

 

United cancels Christmas Eve flights due to staff shortages from omicron - The Washington Post

Omikron is already making the rounds among flight personnel.



It's going to be a very rough Christmas season.

 

You're welcome.

 

Are Omicron’s symptoms mild enough for pilots to keep flying?

 

I have absolutely no idea, but I would imagine that anyone with C19, regardless of variant, should be in quarantine and therefore would not be flying, anyway.

 

Today, 2021-12-024, Christmas Eve, the UK clocked in with over +122,000 fresh infections (my excel table says +124,030) and more importantly, for the first time ever in UK's C-19 history, the 7-day rolling average is now at +100,134 per day. The UK joins a very select, small list of nations to have ever achieved this average.

Also, France reported in today with +94,124 fresh infections and the 7-day rolling average in the land of frogs, snails and baguettes is +66,417 per day.

In Italy, today's C-19 daily case haul was +50,599 fresh infections, with a current 7-day rolling average of +32,978 per day.

Portugal, which had been reporting less than +3,000 daily cases on the average at the end of November is now averaging more than +7,100 per day. This in the land that claims that 100% of the adult population is fully vaccinated.

There are a number of nations that usually do not report in for either all of part of the weekend and those nations may skip today as well and catch up on the statistics either on Monday or Tuesday of next week. Those nations are: Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Hungary. Why Tuesday instead of Monday? This is because there may more of a backlog than people think since many nations celebrate Christmas Day twice, on 12/25 and 12/26, so the usual hospital staffing on Sunday may be less than usual even for a Sunday.

Europe in a nutshell: in the balkan nations (Southeast Europe) and in key central European nations, the wave (Delta, I presume) abating, but in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Benelux nations, Denmark, the UK and Ireland, Omikron is raging. The only nation going against the trend strongly right now is Germany, but Germany is expecting to get hammered harder than ever before right before the New Year begins.

In South America, I am noticing a very sharp rise in cases in Argentina, but, strangely enough, not in Colombia. Also, it is now becoming very apparent that Brasil has essentially given up on testing, so only Ad-shem knows what's really going on there.

The sharp rise in cases in Canada (North America) continues apace, with yesterday's (2021-12-023) haul of +21,493 fresh infections 3 times higher than exactly one week before. Also, Canada's 7-day rolling average is over +10,000 per day for the second day in a row.

In the Middle East, there is a noticeable rise in cases in Israel. Israel's 7-day rolling average went over +1,000 per day yesterday (2021-12-023) and is almost twice as much as one week before. However, in Lebanon, cases are steady and in Jordan, cases are falling. The only other country in the Middle East registered a surge is super-rich UAE.

I was actually expecting to see more depressed numbers than this today, since Christmas Eve is a holiday at least for one half of the day.

My gut tells me that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week are going to produce shockingly high Covid-19 numbers.

 

The weekly concise analysis for the week ending today, 2021-12-026, will come out later tomorrow than it usually does.

 

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

Concise COVID-19 WEEKLY analysis: 2021-12-020 (Monday) through 2021-12-026 (Sunday)
(UTC +0, Greenwich = 20:00 UTC -5, East Coast of the USA)
CALENDAR WEEK 51 - LAST FULL WEEK IN 2021
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֍֍֍֍֍֍֍֍ 280,574,079 ֍֍֍֍֍֍֍֍ΏΏ
Our world exceeded 276, 277, 278, 279 & 280 million total Covid-19 cases during this last week
+5,571,173 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 795,882 = 552.7 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+46,340 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 6,620 = 4.6 new deaths every minute, tendency: falling
USA, UK, FRANCE, GERMANY, POLAND, NETHERLANDS & BELGIUM EXCEEDED THE NEXT MILLION MARK
FOR THE OTHER MAJOR RUBRIK CHANGES DURING THIS TIME, SEE RUBRIK TABLE BELOW
-----------------------------------------​

The Omikron-wave has hit the large swaths of Europe but it now also advancing in N. America and Africa as well.. 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:
֍֍֍֍*** 53,222,424 ***֍֍֍֍֍
THE USA EXCEEDED 52 & 53 MILLION TOTAL COVID-19 CASES IN THE SAME WEEK
THE USA LEADS WORLDWIDE IN BOTH AVERAGE +CASES & +DEATHS
+1,456,710 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 208,101 = 144.5 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+10,531 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 1,504 = 1.0 death every minute, tendency: rising
​

INDIA:
֍֍֍**** 34,793,333 ****֍֍֍
+46,495 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 6,642 = 4.6 new cases every minute, tendency: slightly falling
+2,443 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 349 = 0.2 deaths every minute, tendency: rising​

BRAZIL:
֍֍** 22,239,436 **֍֍
IS BRAZIL TESTING FOR COVID-19 ANYMORE AT ALL?
+25,674 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 3,668 = 2.5 new cases every minute, tendency: slightly rising
+646 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 92 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

UK:
֍** 12,111,476 **֍
THE UK EXCEEDED 12,000,000 TOTAL CONFIRMED CASES ON 2021-12-026
+750,089 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 107,156 = 74.4 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+642 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 92 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

RUSSIA:
֍ 10,392,020 ֍
+177,230 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 25,319 = 17.6 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+7,015 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 1,002 = 0.7 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

TURKEY:
********* 9,307,124 *********
+136,005 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 19,430 = 13.4 new cases every minute, tendency: steady
+1,161 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 166 = 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

FRANCE:
********* 9,116,068 *********
FRANCE EXCEEDED 9,000,000 TOTAL CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES ON 2021-12-025
+490,219 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 70,031 = 48.6 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+1,149 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 162 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

GERMANY:
******* 7,009,634 *******
GERMANY EXCEEDED 7,000,000 TOTAL CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES ON 2021-12-026
+196,898 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 28,128 = 19.5 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+2,118 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 303 = 0.2 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

IRAN:
****** 6,184,762 ******
+13,783 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 1,969 = 1.4 new cases every minute, tendency: falling
+317 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 45 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

SPAIN:
***** 5,718,007 *****
+262,480 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 37,497 = 26.0 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+311 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 44 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: steady
​

ITALY:
***** 5,647,313 *****
+258,158 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 36,880 = 25.6 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+970 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 139 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: rising
​

ARGENTINA:
***** 5,460,042 *****
+70,335 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 10,048 = 7.0 new cases every minute, tendency: sharply rising
+132 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 19 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: idential to last value
​

COLOMBIA:
***** 5,142,690 *****
+17,367 weekly cases // rolling 7-day avg = 2,481 = 1.7 new cases every minute, tendency: rising
+303 weekly deaths // rolling 7-day avg = 43 = < 0.1 deaths every minute, tendency: falling
​

 

Is it too early to speculate that the virus has evolved to a weaker state before becoming a runny nose sort of infection? Or is it
likely that there are more, possibly more lethal variants waiting to pop up?

 

THAT RIGHT THERE IS THE 66,000 EURO QUESTION.