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Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: February 18 Update

Published on 6 Comments on Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: February 18 Update

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through February 18. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

6 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: February 18 Update”

  1. Brett

    Bravo to the UK. Their date rate has gone straight down since the December-January surge, a product of an early aggressive vaccination campaign plus some tight restrictions to slow the spread. They stand a fighting chance of choking this thing off before it hits 2000 deaths/million.

    But honestly everybody is doing good. We must have had a holiday surge, and now we're coming off it plus vaccination.

    1. Silver

      I'm worried about the situation in Sweden, though. We didn't really have a holiday surge over Christmas, ours was actually right before Christmas, and then case numbers declined. But they soon reached a plateau at a fairly high level, making the situation highly volatile so that even very small changes in people's behavior could initiate a third wave.

      I very much fear we might just be in the beginning of that; we are already seeing local clusters with mostly the British mutation. Of course, it would take some time before this would show up in the death chart, which currently looks deceivingly good for Sweden.

    2. theknally

      I've been following Kevin's Coronavirus update since he started doing it, and found it the best way to get a snapshot of how the virus was progressing.

      Since I'm in the UK, I'm very pleased to actually see some good news on our graph for once.

  2. golack

    The US has only one state in "medium risk" category. The rest are high or in active outbreaks. (CovidActNow designations), though at least all are out of "sever outbreak".
    Here's the thing, that "one" state has varied. First ND, then WA, and now OR. States seem to level off around 10 cases/100K/day when they get that low. States really need to wait an extra week or two before loosening restrictions. That 10cases/100K/day is just below the CDC recommendations for re-opening schools.
    TX numbers are still messed up
    Note about community spread and re-opening schools. I heard some push back on community spread requirements for re-opening schools since levels are high now. My sister is a teacher in public schools that was doing in person teaching. They stopped because community spread was high--so high that most kids had to isolate since they were potentially exposed (outside of school) or some one in their "pod" was exposed. I don't think there were any transmissions in school, because they followed the rules, but that also meant kids were not allowed back. There is a difference between schools where the parents can work from home, vs places where the parents are "essential workers", therefore more likely to get exposed. Of course the "essential workers" are the ones who really need the schools open. So please mask up.

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