The pandemic news has been relatively good lately. After the holiday surge, cases started declining in January and deaths started to follow suit three weeks later. Most places are now showing a sustained decline—or at least a plateau—from their peak of a few weeks ago. If we can manage to keep this up, we should be in good shape to accelerate the decline as more people get vaccinated.
The bad news, of course, was that so many countries, including the US, had a holiday surge in the first place. I wonder how many people were killed because we collectively decided to visit our relatives come hell or high water—with full and conscious knowledge of what we were doing?
Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through February 1. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
What is going on with Sweden's data? It's been messy for weeks. Are they having reporting issues or something?
I'm glad the UK seems to be definitively turning it around again on deaths. They probably won't get that high again unless we get a variant that can jump the vaccine immunities for severe illness. I wonder if they'll get it down in time to avoid reaching the "1 in 500 people in the UK have died from this" mark at 2000 deaths per million.
Interestingly enough, they're claiming that the UK variant wasn't just more contagious - it was about 65% deadlier than the older strain.
Who's claiming the UK variant is more deadly?
UK did. They weren’t sure about it, but claimed to have seen indications that it might be more deadly. I’m not sure if this has been verified or not.
I just read an article, in an English paper, about the UK variant, and it said nothing about it being more deadly. It did say the UK version had mutated again, but nothing about that version being more deadly.
Good, I haven’t seen anything about it lately either. Hopefully means it was a scare that didn’t turn out to be true. The statement on the mutation possibly being more lethal (30-40% if I recall correctly) was from more than a week ago, perhaps they have disproven it by now.
Copy/paste from the last time I answered this question (from MoJo):
Re Sweden's numbers: Kevin's charts are based on reported numbers, and for at least two reasons this doesn't work so well for Sweden: Death numbers are reported only on Tuesdays through Fridays, and there is a substantial lag in these reports. The lagging gets worse when the doctors (that prepare the death certificates) are overwhelmed with patients. During the first wave last spring, Kevin used two sources for his Swedish chart for this very reason. As I have done before, I suggest taking a look at this page:
https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
It shows covid-19 deaths in Sweden on their actual dates of death, as well as statistics on the reporting lag.
I might add that things are looking slightly better in Sweden. Cases are down, and hospital/ICU admissions are also going down, with the usual lag period. Deaths appear to follow as well, but of course lags even more so not as clear yet.
However, we do see an increase in cases with the British mutation, might be up to 10% of cases or thereabouts.
Border restrictions are getting tightened; a negative test from within 48 hours plus quarantine on arrival for travelers to Sweden is expected to be required from next week or so. Not so much because of the current British variant, but to control other possible mutations that may pop up anywhere in the world.
"WE don't need no stinkin' maskes"
People complain about schools staying closed--but not about people refusing to wear masks. People complain that their kids can't play sports, but do not seem to be upset about in person dining (at any level). I don't seem them agitating for more contact tracing. I don't see them asking for more social distancing.
And it still looks like this week with be one of the top five for deaths. Deaths will probably start falling sooner than I thought--ca. Valentine's Day and not after St. Patty's day--but they will still be at absurdly high levels. Yes, 2000 deaths/day is better than 4000, but we really can't let that be normalized.
Please mask up. (Sometimes, I only have the choir to preach too--and now, only virtually)
Well said.
At least we are lucky there are no major family holidays coming up. Valentine's day isn't really a big family gathering. Let's hope we get this more under control by Easter. Clearly people are gonna gather and there's no stopping them.
I believe that Kevin's charts could be blown up bigger at his old site. When I try to increase the size here they immediately get blurry. I can still make things out, but maybe there is a way to upload them so they are bigger.
Can I give this an upvote? I remarked on this at the Janaury 31 update.
Well I'll be - there is no like/upvote button here. If I can't get the rush of getting a like should I leave? /s
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There, that should do for a month or so.
I think this is a WordPress thing. You have to explicitly tell it to use the full size image when you upload it, or else WordPress will scale it down to what it thinks is "good enough."
thanks