Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 15. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
36 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: July 15 Update”
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Cats, charts, and politics
Cats, charts, and politics
Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 15. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
Comments are closed.
An interesting development in Los Angeles county. Evidently LA County’s health department has concluded that vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections do shed the virus and are contagious. They’re reinstating the requirements for vaccinated people to wear masks indoors. (Which also implies that the vaccines offer significantly less protection against the Delta variant than previously supposed).
But, weirdly, indoor dining is still permitted. Even though we know it isn’t safe and cannot be made safe. The whole thing is very unsettling.
Yeah, the dining thing does not make much sense.
But requiring masks for everyone? That does. You still can not tell who has or hasn't been vaccinated, and wearing a masks is not much of a burden.
Yes, there can be break through infections, and some of those people can spread the virus--it's just that viral loads tend to be much lower so they are not nearly as effective in spreading the virus as un-vaccinated. If case numbers are high, then yes, mask up unless there is some way to know that everyone at a given place and time are vaccinated.
But this is exactly the problem. We’re organizing our entire society around making life easier and safer for people who choose not to get vaccinated. Masks offer very little protection for the wearer and almost zero incremental protection for vaccinated people, so unless LA County knows or suspects something very scary, people who got vaccinated are organizing their lives to make it easier for unvaccinated people to remain so.
On practically every public health website or airline website, getting vaccinated seems to be at the bottom of the priority list and is practically a throw away. I think we need to emulate the French, Israeli, and Dutch moves to vaccine passports. Just as an example, in highly vaccine skeptical France, the website for making vaccination appointments crashed after Macron announced the the vaccine passports would be universally required to participate in normal life.
@ Mitch Guthman
Well, it's difficult to manage this in our political situation. Unfortunately, the anti-vaccination crowd are not just a small fringe group--they are a substantial chunk of the population and there are well-funded well-organized groups such as Fox News propping them up.
These same people have largely been non-compliant with masking, and some of them probably have defined lockdowns. Even if we go to vaccine passports and legally require them for certain activities, ultimately enforcement will be very difficult--which business owners are going to turn away would-be paying customers?
The country is basically ungovernable and we are getting the fallout from a radically warped notion of individual liberty that has taken hold.
But one thing that's making the country ungovernable is that the majority of the country is tying itself in knots trying to placate a very small minority. Every other country that has tried or is trying vaccine passports has found them simple to implement and very much trouble free in day to day operations.
It's the same situation we found ourselves in with the people who were anti-maskers. We accommodated and let them know that the larger society wasn't going to set boundaries for them with real consequences for crossing those boundaries. The more we bend the knee to these people (on the assumption that they'll eventually see the light), the more demanding, privileged, and unreasonable they become. Enforcement is only difficult if we're unwilling to enforce the rules and the rule-breakers know it.
The people behind Fox News and the people who watch it have seen the majority in this country quietly submit and avoid confrontations. There are no consequences for them and, in fact, there is no meaningful opposition to them politically or socially.
The other point I'd like to make is that with all these contortions, backtracking, and inconsistencies, the public health authorities are really doing the anti-vaccination people's work for them. Either vaccinated people don't shed the virus or they do; either we're contagious during breakthrough infections or we're not. These are two mutually inconsistent things and I think the public health authorities ought to be honest with us about which one of them is true.
Anti-maskers should be treated as attempted murderers.
Let them spend a few days in jail among a lot of coughing and hacking idiots and watch the revolution in their attitude.
Throughout the pandemic, all sorts of rules have been made with all sorts of exceptions and loopholes and inclusion and exclusion criteria that do not make sense in public health terms. Charitably, one can explain these things as tradeoffs between fighting the pandemic and doing economic harm. Less charitably, some of them have looked like tilting the playing field towards the politically connected groups with the best lobbyists.
My suspicion here is that this is the bigger reason too, because allowing vaccinated to unmask makes it impossible to enforce a masking requirement on unvaccinated. I would think reducing the very small chance that a mask prevents a vaccinated person who has caught the virus in a rare breakthrough case from spreading it is a much less important factor.
Of course I am assuming this county decision is based on a real logical scientific basis devoid of politics and that is questionable.
What this will do is mean that a lot of businesses ( grocery stores, etc. ) will now be requiring masks to enter for all.
Being in la county, I have noticed that, after thr mask mandate for vaccinated was first removed, you still saw almost everyone in masks in the grocery store, etc. and some kept a mask mandate for their store even if not required. As time went on, fewer and fewer were masks and the mandate came off most places. Yesterday was the first time I saw a real solid majority unmasked.
Which is irrational. When the mask mandates first came off, cases were extremely low here (near lowest in nation) and not spreading at all. With very very low risk. But seemed that then most vaccinated people were still masking in stores. By yesterday, with case counts really going up and the case numbers starting to approach a slightly worrisome level, most were not masked. Rational reaction would be the opposite.
I think a lot of it is here psychology. When people see that the large majority are masked, even if they are fully vaccinated and know they really do not need to be, they mask to not stand out and get funny looks. When most are unmasked, unvaccinated who might feel safer masked might not do so to not stand out the other way.
Seems once you cross the threshold for it being "normal " to be unmasked, it snowballs..
Funny thing to me going around yesterday. The grocery store and even the drug store allowed vaccinated to be unmasked ( which means in reality anyone could). But the one place still mandating masks for all was the el pollo loco, a somewhat lower middle class fast food chain. Except if you are dining in and they had very limited tables. Almost the last place I would have expected to insist on more than required.
I do personally think this decision is a bad one. Outside of the additional burden that masking puts on people ( which is not all that much mostly), will it help accomplish the purpose long term? I think not.
I think many here disagree but I see little evidence that masks really help all that much except marginally. But there is a downside. This will somewhat discourage getting those who resisted so far vaccinated.
And I would say getting vaccination rates up is far far more important than masking for getting this under control
And, disappointingly, I do think that it looks like, based on evidence it is spreading just about everywhere, that we may need total immunity on average of 85% or more to stop delta. For this I think that natural immunity counts as well and maybe you weight children a big less ( so 90% of adults and 25% of kids from natural only should be ok).
And we are not there yet or all that close.
I agree with you. This was very much predictable when the CDC said that vaccinated people could unmask but did so without a universal system of vaccine passports in place. It put us right back where we were at the start of the pandemic except that vaccinated people are probably somewhat safer (or perhaps not since all the public health authorities are now saying vaccinated people should wear masks, so who knows?)
The other thing is the way that vaccines are being downplayed. I got an email from Southwest talking about masks and disinfectants and basically everything except for saying that people should get vaccinated. Blue states need vaccine passports and red states need to be quarantined until the virus (and any new variants) burn themselves out.
This should prove interesting if they don’t backtrack:
“SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – All students, faculty, and staff heading to a University of California campus this fall will be required to have received the COVID-19 vaccine before returning, the UC system announced in a new policy Thursday.”
https://www.kron4.com/community/schools/university-of-california-requires-covid-19-vaccines-for-all-this-fall/
I had my blood drawn a few weeks ago and the Phlebotomist told me they were not going to get vaccinated. I was shocked. I think all hospital workers should be required to be vaccinated.
I don’t think the UC system will backtrack. They really don’t want to deal with another major outbreak just to appease less than 20% of Californians. Plus, my guess is that this decision was cleared with the governor and the state Democratic Party leadership.
I have also been surprised at vaccine resistance among healthcare workers. Oddly, when they’re interviewed they tend not to give reasons and the interviewers rare press them on the inconsistency in being unvaccinated in the epicenter of the pandemic. I think the approach in France and, increasingly elsewhere in Europe, of requiring vaccination as a requirement for keeping one’s job is the best approach.
The fundamental problem is that people who are not vaccinated and refuse to wear masks, etc, is that they are not choosing for themselves alone but instead are choosing whether the pandemic will continue until enough have been infected or died so that there are too few available hosts. This is a fundamental problem with all forms of libertarianism in a pandemic or other emergency that can only be successfully addressed by collective action.
I'm already seeing more unvaccinated Covid positive persons on the street in my EMS system in a well vaccinated state.
The last excuse I heard was, "I guess I didn't have the time." Infuriating.
I suspect you are only agreeing with me with respect on why la county was doing this and not other parts of my post.
I think my perspective here is likely different than yours in a number of ways.
I just see little actual evidence that masks have really helped much at all. Initially I did think they would work to help but looking at results and comparing across counties, I do not see it. If you tried to control for other factors, it seemed that the result of masking itself is very small or even zero. And many studies were clearly trying to show masks worked ( and not just find the truth) and biased things some, and still could not find a big effect. Disappointing as I fitst thought they would help a lot more. I do suspect however that maybe their efficacy has increased a bit more over time as people learned how to wear them right ( i.e. do not keep touching your face to adjust the mask and do not wear it below your freaking nose and, for God's sake, do not wear it until you have to sneeze or cough and then pull it down to do so).
Much better for those wearing masks today than it was last year this time.
Plus I expect the cloth masks are basically useless, surgical masks very iffy and only n95 significantly effective.
So, for me, short term, I weigh how much a new mask mandate will help vs how much it will hurt ( by discouraging vaccination). And I think overall better to leave the mask mandate where it was and just for unvaccinated. Yes that means compliance for unvaccinated is just voluntary. But some will still comply voluntarily and I just doubt masks work much anyway. And note that vaccine resistors forced to wear masks against their will or just going to wear cheap cloth masks and wear below their nose anyway. We just cannot enforce effective mask compliance in any case.
Anything that discourages vaccinations in any significant effect I oppose..unless shown to really help..
Yes, that's true and I appreciate you clarifying the limited nature of my agreement.
I would just point out that while it's true that studies of whether masks (even reasonably well fitting KN95 or even N95 masks) protect the wearer have generally shown that they're not very effective, a large number of extremely well conducted studies have shown even cloth masks to be highly
effective at protecting others. Essentially, your mask protects me and my mask protects you.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7
The problem for me is that requiring masks for vaccinated people implies that if we become infected, we are contagious. If that's true, the many studies that concluded otherwise are wrong. And maybe the vaccines themselves are less effective than previously thought. This is an important question and I believe we need honest information which our current public health leadership seems incapable or unwilling to provide,
What can we say. It’s LaLa Land …
The basic problem is that as much as the health authorities and the Democrats bleat about vaccinations, they aren't will to take the necessary steps to genuinely incentivize otherwise reluctant people (who are not conservative fanatics) to get vaccinated. The simple fact is that without vaccine passports and really motivating people to get vaccinated, our ill-advised patronizing of reluctant people and our kowtowing to the Republicans means that it will be years and perhaps many years before we can hope to return to normal (without simply accepting Covid-19 sickness and death in the way that we've simply accepted gun massacres as a "natural phenomena").
But also, we who are not anti-vaccine fanatics need truthful information. One reason for the situation in which we find ourselves is that the public health authorities have not leveled with the public for a variety of unacceptable reasons. Either people who are vaccinated aren't contagious if they get a breakthrough infection or they are. That's important to people who were intelligent and responsible enough to get vaccinated and I think we deserve to be given accurate and truthful information rather than being manipulated (which is what I think is going on now).
I know people like to point out that the numbers in absolute terms are much lower, but I still hate to see any day where the dot moves up instead of down. I know why it is happening, but that doesn't change the fact that every death now is inexcusable.
I wouldn't be surprised if everyone at Fox News was vaccinated and requires all people working there, esp. behind the scenes, to be vaccinated to protect the on air talent, so that "talent" can promote vaccine misinformation. Heck, there may be mask requirements too, along with NDA's. Note, this is just asking questions.
Lincoln Project assures us that Fox is fully vaccinated. Check out 1:01:50 --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tngNCrDSq8&t=3823s
There was a time where the virus was in retreat across the US. Now, every state has an infection rate above 1 (CovidActNow).
Only eight states at moderate levels of risk, six at very high levels. Most are under caution.
Those six in the red are there for high number of cases (>25): AR, MO, FL--yes, FL is back above 25 new cases/day/100K.
Or, have high rates of transmission: TN, GA, AL (infection rates >1.40).
Travel restrictions in the US are back for the un-vaccinated in places.
Only six states have new case loads at or below 2: PA, SD, ME, VT, MD, NH, and those numbers are climbing now too. Still no cases for NMI.
Not to keep beating the same dead horse but the obvious answer is that the CDC made a huge mistake in saying that vaccinated people didn’t need to wear masks in the absence of a universally imposed way of distinguishing the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. The emergence of the Delta variant made things much worse but the resulting rejuvenated pandemic was entirely predictable.
Nope, the numbers are peaking. By this time next weeik, will be declining. Sorry, but cases look to peak 42000 lower than last year
I’ve mentioned that Marin County has the best vaccination rate in the state. Yet their R-eff is currently 1.32. New variants must be very contagious.
One possible explanation here is that Marin county had a relatively lower number of cumulative covid cases and thus should have a relatively lower % age of natural immunity. So their total % who have good immunity ( natural or vaccine) their relative advantage is much less than if you look at just vaccinations.
If you look across counties and try to make some adjustment for natural immunity ( need to guess at how the natural immunity number splits between vaccinated and not),I think you will find it helps a bit in explaining the differences.
But note also means that % you need for total to get to here immunity is that much higher.
But another trend I think I see that cannot be explained ( or I cannot think of one) . If you try to estimate what the r should be based on total immunity estimate and compare, it sure seems that simply having a low number of cases increases r.
Almost 80% vaccinated (first dose, 70+% fully), still leaves a little over 50K ready to be infected.
From their dashboard, the unvaccinated case rate is 4x the vaccinated, and along with the Delta variant, the Gamma strain is running amok too. Delta is more infectious for un-vaccinated, the Gamma strain is better at break through infections.
https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/surveillance
The geographic data is lagging (and wasn't showing up in the main window), so can't say if local hotspots correspond to areas with lower vaccination rates.
Golack,
Thanks for finding that marin county website. It really is just outstanding. If all counties had that much easily described info, we all would have a better handle on things.
Problem is marin county is just not large enough or representative enough to draw very broad conclusions from their data. Too much could be based on random chance. If a large county like la county showed this derailed data, we would really have something.
Re your point about gamma being more transmissible for vaccinated and delta for vaccinated, that is interesting but was it in the Marin county website or somewhere else that you saw it? Would not be surprising to me that delta is evolved more to go after unvaccinated as it arose in india first. If you have a variant evolved to be vaccine resistant, it could quite possibly be even less transmissible to those with no immunity at all than original variant. And variants might differ as to which type of restrictions are most effective.
With multiple variants running around at same time, it can get real complicated fast.
Interesting to me in marin county site that the alpha variant is still hanging in there and has not been fully eclipsed by delta. Might the alpha variant actually be more transmissible than delta in some niche situations?
But it is disappointing that, in a county where full vaccination is 70% plus ( ignoring partial) and natural immunity has to be at least somewhere between 10-20% so I would say that total immunity should be over 80%, that the r is still now well over 1.0. And this is while I am sure a lot of marin county residents have been continuing to mask and social distance ( if for show as good liberals if nothing else ).
If we need maybe 90% total immunity to actually get r below 1.0 with some restrictions still in place, that could imply that base r0 pre restrictions ( before any immunity) is more like 10. Measles territory.
delta vs gamma variants (and others)
https://www.wired.com/story/delta-gamma-alpha-covid-19-variants-taking-over-the-united-states/
The five states with the highest percentage of total population with at least one dose are all seeing spikes in cases, now.
Delta being 2-3x more transmissible means that a lot of the mitigation that was previously thought to be ineffective or otherwise unnecessary against the original strain from China, needs to be re-reviewed. Out of an abundance of caution, we need to be prepared right now for a subvariant that is even more transmissible than Delta or Delta Plus.
Again, where are you getting 2-3 times more transmissible? Do you have a source for that? Would be interesting to see it if you do.
From what I have seen the estimates have been no more than twice or maybe a little higher. I have seen some saying alpha was 50% more than original and delta is 50% more than alpha, which would mean either 2 times or 2.25 times depending on what they meant ( which as usual is not clear). But note when you see such a round estimate like 50% it is almost surely just a rough guess.
What I have not seen is any actual scientific based study making a best actual estimate based on something, with of course a wide range of uncertainty
And it also will likely make a difference based on conditions. Are we talking summer or winter, with masks or not, with social distancing or not, assuming what level of natural or vaccine immunity, etc. Depending on what exact mutation the variant has, the change in transmissibility might differ depending. And some variant might even be more transmissible than original for one set of conditions but less transmissible for another.
For example, say a variant has a mutation allowing it to get around the way a vaccine created immunity ( i.e. the focus on that one spike). Very likely whatever change allowed it to get around the vaccine immunity will be counterproductive to be transmissible to those with no immunity and possibly to those with natural immunity. And consider the difference with vaccine and natural immunity. One possible advantage discussed with vaccine is that it is really focused on a particular part of the virus where it is more vulnerable to be blocked. Natural immunity tends to not be as focused and tries to block all aspects of the virus, even ones less vulnerable to attack. But that vaccine focus also may make the vaccine immunity more vulnerabke to a variant. Harder for a virus to evolve against the diffuse focus of natural immunity.
And I am also assuming that by "transmissibulity " they mean change in r. And not even sure that is always what is meant. The scientific illiteracy in news reports and politicians is insane.
The 2-2.5x is well within my 2-3x citation, isn't it? 🤔
Well anyway, here:
IOW, closer to 3x than 2x.
Nope, not much of a spike.
AR - cases increased 7.2x since low in early June.
FL - cases increased 4.5x since low in mid June.
Many others are 3x higher since hitting floor in June.
Again, that isn't impressive. Especially since cases will be coming down in the next week as the 4th winds down.
Right. What's going to stop the infection spread? Magic?
Last year at this time, hospitalization was around 45000. Now, 15000. Stop whining over a nonexistent problem.
Thanks for that. Figured it came from somewhere.
And I was not realiy questioning the accuracy of an estimate of up to 3 times. A month or so I would have felt that smelled like an exaggeration. But today, just looking at where the virus is increasing even with fairly good immunity, I was thinking that the r had to be higher than initially thought, and 3 times seemed more possible or even probable.
What you cite is not the study itself but just a summary of findings but would note a few things.
First 60% first increase and then 60% more should get you to 2.56 more. Which is a bit closer to 3 times than 2 times but not by much. So saying 2 to 3 times base on thst is maybe true but tends to be misleading. However, my best guess is that reality is more than 2.5 times and maybe 3 just based on what we are seeing.
Second, still never see any clarification on r based on what. Says maybe an r0 of 6 to 7. But I think it is clear that original and alpha had a higher r in winter than summer, and difference was way big.
So just saying r0 with clarifying in what conditions is somewhat useless. And nobody i have seen even mentions that. And many other sorts of variables as I mentioned in prior post. I do wonder if the delta strain advantage is reduced in colder weather. Or maybe also it evolved some to get around restrictions so much more transmissible if people taking restrictions but less where they are not.
So say r0 no restrictions is 2.5 original and 5.0 delta. With restrictions it is 1.5 original and 4.0 delta. Delta is 2.67 times more transmissible with restrictions and only 2 times without. Actually good reasons to maybe expect this. And maybe supported by current experience.