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Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: February 16 Update

Published on 35 Comments on Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: February 16 Update

Apparently Johns Hopkins decided they had misreported the numbers for the past week or so. They've been updated, and the new numbers show a clear and ongoing decline in the COVID-19 death rate in the US.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through February 16. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

35 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: February 16 Update”

  1. FirstThirtyMinutes

    From the front lines in a relatively hot zone: haven't seen a new case of Covid in at least a week. Even at the peak it... wasn't that bad? It helped that we haven't seen any flu this year. I haven't even had a kid with a cold.

    1. golack

      Ed Yong at The Atlantic has done some great work on Covid-19. In one of his articles, he described the "patchiness" of the outbreaks". Everything is fine, until it really, really isn't. There can be areas that remain relatively unscathed while others are completely overwhelmed.
      We've learned how to deal with it better. Mask wearing helps a lot--and even if it doesn't completely stop the spread, apparently it lowers the initial dose so the disease is not as bad as it could be, so less hospitalizations. We are doing better at diagnosing and quarantining people affected, so there is less spread--and there is more care with regards to vulnerable populations. And we have better treatments, so people needing hospitalization will fair better and spend less time

    1. emilruebe

      Not yet. There are still a lot of people dying, more than in spring 2020 on a daily basis.
      Although since we started with vaccines I am hopeful it will die out in 3 months or so.

        2. Mitch Guthman

          I don’t see any reason for such optimism. Most of the country is still playing Russian roulette by having large potential super-spreader events. We know that even though most infected people don’t significantly infect others, there’s a small number of people who are super-spreaders. Which means that if nobody in the group is infected, everything’s fine but if one of these super spreaders is present there’s a very high probability of a significant outbreak.

          More advanced countries like Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand or even European countries like France and Germany are well equipped to fight an outbreak by bringing overwhelming resources to bear but we are not. Partly this is because of our idiotic system of letting each state set the national response and partly because we don’t have the capability to fight outbreaks.

          All of which means that we’re on super spreader event from returning to square one.

          1. Midgard

            Cases are down to 60000 a day. Half the country has already had it. The elderly are being protected. It's over. Even Biden gets it.

            1. Mitch Guthman

              I don't think half the country has had Covid-19. My understanding that's it's around 15-20%. The figure that the Economist used in December of 2020 was 15%.

              But also, one trend that we've seen is that the virus has been something of a rollercoaster where a state or locality shuts down hard, beats the virus, and then opens up a bit to soon and there's a resurgence that sometimes leaves them worse off than originally. California is an excellent example of this.

              Vaccinations are proceeding very slowly, at best. The supply constraints are still a huge bottleneck and the distribution system in most places is functioning very poorly even when there's vaccine to deliver.

              It's over in New Zealand. It's over in Taiwan. When the EU finally gets it act together, it will be more or less over by Christmas. I really don't see the basis for you belief that it's over here.

              https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/12/10/almost-one-in-five-americans-may-have-been-infected-with-covid-19

          2. Total

            I don't think half the country has had Covid-19

            That Economist article is from December 10 and in the time since then, the number of official cases has almost doubled. If the number of unofficial has as well that works out to in the range of half of all Americans.

            And the best estimates I've seen suggest that there are 5 unrecorded cases per recorded one, which would put us nearly at 170 million cases, easily half.

          4. KenSchulz

            I’m skeptical of claims that cases are 5x reported cases, implying 50% of the population having or having had COVID-19. Yet we jut came off a peak that was higher than any previous one. If half the population has antibodies, one would expect spread to decline. Alternatively, it could be that behavior became considerably more risky than it was at the previous peak. I don’t see any indication of that: retail sales, restaurant meals eaten in, travel, are still at quite low levels. Yet the virus is finding susceptible targets.

  4. golack

    So--they are dealing with the IN and OH data dumps?
    The winter storm(s) seem to be affecting the data reports. TX reported 52 deaths, whereas last week it was at 301 (CovidTrackingProject). Hospitalizations did fall off from their highs, but not by that much and not that quickly--so odds are data artifacts. This week will be low, next week (and week after?) will be catch up. Overall, deaths are dropping--but probably won't be around 1000/day for a coiuple days a week until St. Patty's day, i.e. second surge levels. By then, the vaccination campaign should cause a drop in deaths since most of the vulnerable will have been vaccinated.

    2. Jerry O'Brien

      The comments on the daily Johns Hopkins data files show they've patched the Ohio numbers in all the way back to the Stone Age. They did the same for Indiana last week.

    1. Midgard

      She is a Zionist. The Proud Boys are a Zionist front as a ex-member said 3 months ago. All Russkie created. Amazing how proggies fall for Psyops

  8. cld

    Two coronaviruses met and had a baby,

    Two variants have merged into heavily mutated coronavirus,

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2268014-exclusive-two-variants-have-merged-into-heavily-mutated-coronavirus/

    Two variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes covid-19 have combined their genomes to form a heavily mutated hybrid version of the virus. The “recombination” event was discovered in a virus sample in California, provoking warnings that we may be poised to enter a new phase of the pandemic.

    The hybrid virus is the result of recombination of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant discovered in the UK and the B.1.429 variant that originated in California and which may be responsible for a recent wave of cases in Los Angeles because it carries a mutation making it resistant to some antibodies.
    . . .
    If confirmed, the recombinant would be the first to be detected in this pandemic. In December and January, two research groups independently reported that they hadn’t seen any evidence of recombination, even though it has long been expected as it is common in coronaviruses.
    . . . .
    Recombination commonly occurs in coronaviruses because the enzyme that replicates their genome is prone to slipping off the RNA strand it is copying and then rejoining where it left off. If a host cell contains two different coronavirus genomes, the enzyme can repeatedly jump from one to the other, combining different elements of each genome to create a hybrid virus.

    The recent emergence of multiple variants of the new coronavirus may have created the raw material for recombination because people can be infected with two different variants at once.

    “We may be getting to the point when this is happening at appreciable rates,” says Sergei Pond at Temple University in Pennsylvania, who keeps an eye out for recombinants by comparing thousands of genome sequences uploaded to databases. He says there is still no evidence of widespread recombination, but that “coronaviruses all recombine, so it’s a question of when, not if”.

    The implications of the finding aren’t yet clear because very little is known about the recombinant’s biology. However, it does carry a mutation from B.1.1.7, called ?69/70, which makes the UK virus more transmissible, and another from B.1.429, called L452R, which can confer resistance to antibodies.

    “This kind of event could allow the virus to have coupled a more infectious virus with a more resistant virus,” Korber said at the New York meeting.
    . . .

  9. Atticus

    As expected. I was a little perplexed by this graph before Johns Hopkins apparently made some corrections. Between the million plus people getting vaccinated every day and the half or so of the population that has already had covid and have the antibodies, it's no wonder cases and deaths are declining rapidly. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter.

    1. iamr4man

      The number of cases is going down to pre-holiday levels. The number of deaths should go down drastically because the people most likely to die from the disease are getting vaccinated first.
      Over the past year I have complained numerous times regarding the reporting of the disease as either you get it and then are ok or you get it and die. In reality there are a number of people who get it and it harms their life drastically, but they don’t die. Last year I visited my son in New Jersey. When he picked us up he told us New Jersey had its first Coronavirus case. I later thought to see what happened to him and saw stories of how he was hospitalized for over a month and even when he went home he required oxygen. I recently saw he is finally off oxygen and getting his life together. He is a young man. I’ve seen a few stories about people who are long timers with the disease, but nothing as to percentages of people who get it and have serious/long lasting/permanent health issues. And no information as to the numbers of young people so affected.
      It makes sense that something that might kill an older person might not kill a younger person yet make their lives much worse with long lasting or per a health issues. Just looking at the number of deaths going down doesn’t tell the full story.
      I seriously doubt that half the country has already had the disease and are immune, but within the next few months the number of people vaccinated will be going up quite a bit so the number of cases should go down. Keep your fingers crossed that the vaccines are effective against the new variants we hear about each day.

      1. Atticus

        Understood. No doubt some people have a much tougher time of it than others. And there may be long term effects we don't know about yet. But, thankfully, it seems like those long haulers are the minority. Just anecdotally, I know 60 or 70 people that have had covid and all of them recovered. Most didn't have symptoms more than a cold. (One of my friends was in bad shape and spent several days in the ICU but is now fully recovered.) I'm not making light of the disease. Even if it doesn't kill you it can drastically alter your quality for some time. Just saying, the odds are in your favor that the impact will be minimal.

      1. Atticus

        I understand immunity doesn't last forever. But, I personally know 60 or 70 people, adults and kids, that have had covid. Most of the ones that I'm close with get tested for antibodies fairly regularly and they all have it for many months afterwards. Definitely not a free pass for life but with so many millions of people that are walking around with the antibodies it must help with reducing the rate of spread.

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