Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 16. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
37 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: July 16 Update”
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Cats, charts, and politics
Cats, charts, and politics
Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 16. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
Comments are closed.
Someone pointed me to this:
As I've previously urged, we cannot assume the mitigation lessons learned during the original strain still apply to Delta and subvariants. When you've got a variant that is now 2-3x more infectious than the original strain, the rules have changed.
Look around the world and *everyone* who for over a year had a solid handle on COVID-19 is now having rapidly rising infections.
The reimplementation of previous mitigation strategies may be insufficient this time around.
All too true, I'm afraid.
If it’s that contagious then we are all going to get it. For those of us who are vaccinated it won’t be bad, or even noticed. For those not vaccinated it will likely be bad or awful.
French scientific panel on the Delta variant: "We can't get the epidemic under control unless 90 to 95 percent of people are vaccinated or infected."
If that's the case here, and if vax rates continue to plateau, we have a long way to go with this pandemic. A rough guess, maybe another 50 to 100 million cases to come (officially, we've had 35 mil so far).
Vax rates need to accelerate.
Probably didn't help for that tail-waggin' Kamala to have dissed the vaxxes last fall. The least vaxxed group took it to heart, and I'm sure the "progressives" are happy with it. LOL
The least vaxxed group is Trumpians. Interesting that you think they take their advice from Kamala.
You don't read too well. LOL
Fleeting contact is still uncertain. The partner of someone who infected someone else via possible fleeting contact was not infected for exampke.
I'm not saying this is wrong, you are right to be cautious but there is significant uncertainty.
I am still not reversing my apology to Ron de Santis.
Teacher and students need to get vaccinated now.
College kids better get started if they want to go back to campus.
This outbreak is hitting younger people, and they can get hit hard. The rise in cases in FL is real. MO and AR outbreaks just keep on going, and spreading across the US.
and another way to know it's getting bad, Ed Yong has another article in The Atlantic on it:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/delta-missouri-pandemic-surge/619456/
As case numbers swell, more people decide to get the shots. Vaccination rates are on the rise now in most states, including the current hot spots. It's too bad it has taken so long for it to sink in.
Isn't this just what we have seen with regard to all of the interventions attempted. When case rates surged in an area, people decreased their mobility (whether in response to lockdown orders or spontaneously--data suggests that mobility declines were pretty much the same with or without lockdown orders) and started masking up. Then when things started to look better, they (prematurely) resumed mobility and dropped the mask use. That's why we have been seeing recurrent waves.
The good news is that once you're vaccinated you can't unvaccinate yourself (though we still have no final word on how long vaccine-induced or disease-induced immunity to Covid lasts.)
But everything in this epidemic response in the Western world has been too little, too late, and discontinued too soon.
That's about the story.
Going to throw out some speculations here. I have been looking at where the current Rs are for different counties in the usa and seeing if the differences make sense given the different rates of vaccination and estimated rates of natural immunity from having had covid. A number of different guesses go into that , such as the multiple of confirmed covid cases vs actual and the amount of overlap/correlation between getting vaccinated and having had covid.
So, for example you want to see if you can explain the difference in R between counties with high immunity and those with less. One problem to really analyze is that high vaccination is inversely correlated with natural immunity. Counties with high vaccination rates tend to have less natural immunity, and that tends to bring counties closer
But here are my initial thoughts.
A) you clearly have to consider natural immunity too, not just vaccinations as too many seem to be missing. If you do not do that, no way can you explain things. The counties with low vaccination rates just do not have a high enough relative R to possibly explain the difference just looking at vaccinations.
B) but, trying to factor in a best guess at total immunity, counties with lower immunity just do not have a high enough relative R vs. counties with higher total immunity. So why is that?
C) one possibility is my best guess at the actual covid cases resulting in natural immunity is too low because there were more unconfirmed cases than I thought. But hard to see that as full explanation, because, if I then use a higher multiple of confirmed cases, I can get close to 100% total immunity for hardest hit areas and that cannot be true ( as still spreading there).
D) another possibility is that I am underestimating the effectiveness of natural immunity vs vaccine immunity ( which I was assuming equal). And thinking of it, that makes sense. There might be two measures of effectiveness of immunity, for the individual and for the community. And logical that the community effectiveness ( i.e. slowing the spread ) is lower than individual vaccine but vice versa for individual.
Why? Because of WHO is getting vaccinated and who has caught covid. Individuals getting vaccinated have tended to be those persons who already posed a lower risk of spread based on lifestyle and inclination to be careful or abide by restrictions. For infections, the opposite.
Consider a fresh population. R is 3.0 like maybe original. But just lump population into two groups. One are the 50% who live lives in a manner that will tend to not spread a disease as much if they have it. Say older, living alone, not as social, etc. The other group has more young, large families, partiers. At start, the second group is the one causing most community spread and they are also catching it more. So having any in first group catch covid helps less with immunity.
Say 50% of pop first catch it and develop immunity. With only 50% left vulnerable, should mean net R goes from 3 to 1.5. But, if the 50% more prone to spread are 100% of cases, and they spread twice as much as the other group, then I think net R becomes 1.0. Extreme example just to illustrate that natural immunity in a young partier helps more than in an old loner.
D) when I adjust to consider my estimated natural immunity to be maybe 20% more effective than vaccine immunity ( for community spread not individual risk) , that seems to get a lot closer.
E) but still just does not explain all the relative differences well. Places with an estimated high true effective total immunity still seem to be having a higher relative R than they should compared to places with relatively low immunity.
F) why is that? Here is one guess. The delta variant is actually spreading more than we think among vaccinated or those with natural immunity, because many of them catch covid again but do not know it and never get tested. And totally asymptomatic or so mild they never think of it.
G) so the estimates of the delta R in a virgin population of something up to 9.0 ( which really makes sense if you look at india where that first spread was pretty bad and worse than reported but not anywhere as bad as with a 9 R). The R estimates now are looking at usa uk, etc. .Placss that have significant immunity already. And they are guessing at delta R0 base on seeing actual current R and estimating how much immunity reduces it. If they are overestimating effectiveness of immunity, they are overestimating R0.
And my best policy decision based on the above is that we are just not going to stop delta until it infects most of those still vulnerable. Even though maybe natural or vaccine immunity might not be as effective re community spread as we thought, still should be good enough if it gets to 95% we got it beat. So maybe in the end only 5% of people will be able to not get vaccinated and still never get covid. I would guess really 10% or a bit more as have to think some few have a sort of inherent immunity and many of the remainder are children who catch and infect somewhat less.
So I might agree to
1) a short, no more than 3 weeks or less period where we go back to strict restrictions. Giving the chance of remaining vaccine procrastinators to get vaccinated or prepare to isolate for a while or accept they will likely catch covid if did not yet.
2) and announce they all come off then and the rest of society ( vaccinated or those who got covid) or going back to normal then, and not upending their lives to help those who do not get vaccinated.
3) approve children under 12 getting vaccinated like other nations but make it clear govt not saying it is clearly a good idea. Just not sure if worth it or not an up to individual decision
4) after restrictions gone, it will be spread largely unchecked among those who never had covid and refuse to get vaccinated and do not isolate themselves for a few months. Their choice.
5) for the small number who cannot get vaccinated due to immunity issues, sorry. You are just going to have to isolate again like last year for maybe 4 months.
6 ) but get it over with (before winter) so LET IT SPREAD. allow big indoor sporting events unmasked. If no way out of enough catching covid to get to maybe 90 or 95% total immunity, then just accept that. And do not say we can do that by vaccination because not happening and we are giving them one last chance.
7) we do not want a very controlled spread so that we drag this out with a just below 1.0 R. We want to keep the spread going by actively almost encouraging the spread until the R still drops below 1.
8 ) and then put mild restrictions back on for a while driving R way down to maybe .5 until we really kill it. Allowing the isolated to come back out.
"Extreme example just to illustrate that natural immunity in a young partier helps more than in an old loner. "
In fact, when the vaccines first received emergency use authorization, there were lots of discussions about who should get the top priority. While that question was resolved in favor of the elderly, and there were some prominently media-covered groups advocating for disadvantaged minorities to go to the front of the line, there were some epidemiologists, relying on epidemic models, who argued that the most effective policy would be to "vaccinate the people in bars first." Part of me still thinks they were actually right.
I remember that discussion. But I do not think anyone in power seriously ever considered giving bar patrons priority. It was more whether to prioritize all elderly ( and maybe those with health conditions) vs. Essential workers as which was second priority. Health care workers and nursing home residents ( elderly and also in congregate setting with high spread risk) were an easy choice for first priority.
Although prioritising essential workers had a sort of appeal as a sort of out of the box idea, I do think going with elderly was the right choice in the end.
The differential in death risk by age was so huge for covid ( much more than other viruses like flu) that starting with elderly would end up saving more lives even if it was not quite the quickest way to slow the spread. And another point to me ( that a politician would never make publicly) is that giving the vaccine to essential workers was going to "waste" a lot of doses to a great extent. By early February 2021, here in los angeles, the cumulative covid cases were probably 40% or more of the population imo ( counting undiagnosed and asymptomatic). If 40% of all had already had it and had natural immunity, what % of the most vulnerable essential workers had already had it, especially since they are generally younger and more active socially? Had to be well over 50%. But older non nursing home residents had low case counts and much fewer cases.
What did annot me was that I am in my early 60s. And after nursing homes and medical, they went to over 65. Left out but ok. Then they went to essential workers before they dropped age to anything below 65, so left out again and the definition of essential workers was ridiculously broad. But just a little annoying. But they were strongly encouraging ( even with incentives) for any essential worker who knew they had covid and recovered, even a month ago , to get vaccinated, while I was still not eligible. That was stupid. I do know some essential workers who got covid in december or january and were pushed to get vaccinated early but refusee on principle because they knew they had little need for it then, and would wait until plenty of supply. They were a highly moral temporary vaccine resistor ( and vaccinated now).
But all that is in the past and no longer relevant. Alomost anyone over 12 who wanted to be vaccinated has been unless they are just lazy or procrastinating.
So now the early prioritization is not relevant as to who is currently vaccinated. And generally those vaccinated tend to be those who tended to spread covid less anyway ( so value of vaccination to community a little less) while vice versa for natural immunity. Which is why I think to estimate total effective immunity, natural immunity is a bit more important than vaccinated.
My "blue state" is so incompetently run that it was easy to lie and get vaxxed even though we weren't on any priority lists. LOL
The immune response from the mRNA vaccines does appear to be stronger than from natural infection:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.440089v2.full.pdf
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/
And people who are vaccinated after having had a natural infection typically respond strongly to the vaccine, which they most likely would not do if their immunity was already high.
All these are interesting ideas to explore, but my own belief about inexplicable differences in R is that it's due to randomness. The data for individual counties can fall far from what a model would predict.
Oh I agree there is a lot of randomness involved, especially with the smaller counties. No possible formula, even if it got everything completely correct, is going to account for all of the variability or even close to all.
But across large groups like all counties there should be some pattern on average. And what I see is that current R is better predicted by total immunity with natural weighted a bit higher than vaccinated.
But there are a few other patterns I seem to have noticed. Seems that being in northern areas helps a bit, just like it seemed to last year. Still some seasonable effects. Maybe south heat pushes people into air conditioning with windows closed ( bad bad for covid) and less so in north. Also more sun in north and that helps too.
Also I just seem to see the big outliers, where the R is either way higher or lower than it " should" be are places with low current case counts too. Generally, current case counts should not affect R directly ( until people change behavior and I see little evidence of that). My explanation is delta taking over from Alpha and others. Some counties have just got lucky and delta got there late. Initially growing delta offset some by shrinking alpha so R not as high. Explains the low outliers, still in shrinking alpha phase. When delta is established but case counts still low, my wild speculation is that there is a small group whose genetics make them super vulnerable to delta. So big R for a short while after delta has largely overthrown alpha, while it quickly churns through that small first group.
But I also see where info is available that alpha seems to be out competed by delta but then seems to sort of stabilize at a lower % than delta. Original covid just seems to get wiped out ( expect it will go extinct by end of year). Makes me suspect that delta maybe is not universally more transmissible than alpha and alpha might have an advantage with some minority of people for some genetic reason.
Interesting. People also mentioned air conditioning as being a problem for the South especially last summer.
But what you posted really does not directly show that.
The first thing above only finds a difference in how natural and vaccine produced antibodies target the virus. The vaccine antibodies focus more on one thing while the natural ones are more broadly directed. And then it gives a reason why this might make the vaccine antibodies more effective. That is really only just speculation, even if it does turn our true. And it does not talk about why there might be a reason why the natural antibodies might be better. If the natural antibodies are not as focused on one mode of attack should that not make it harder for a variant to evolve around it.
And I still tend to think that I trust that our evolved natural immune system might have thought of a few tricks that our scientists doing mnra vaccines might have missed.
The second study only looks at the number of antibodies produced. But assumes that most correlate directly with actusl.effective immunity, ignoring t cell immunity and other things.
The natural immune system does tend to let antibodies go down after a while, because that must be an evolutionary advantage ( otherwise it would have evolved to not do that). There must be some disadvantage to continuing to maintain large numbers of antibodies for a long time. If the vaccine " tricks" the body into keeping antibodies longer, what is that costing? What is the reason why our own immune system does not?
It could be that keeping the antibodies longer is still a net good thing even if it was not in caveman times. Say it is just an issue of energy consumption and today we sure do not have a problem getting enough calories.
But maybe the natural immunity shifts to more effective things long term like t cell while vaccine does not.
Or maybe the vaccine is more effective at stopping covid, but at the cost of distracting our immune system from stopping something else.
And my point above was that, if the issue is stopping the spread and getting to herd immunity, the issue is effective community immunity not individual immunity. I just invented those terms as have not seem this discussed.
And there are good reasons to think that a case of vaccine immunity is less effective than a case of natural immunity. This is because natural immunity will be skewed more toward those who pose a big risk of spreading ( and catching). While the opposite for vaccine.
So possible that natural immunity is less effective than vaccine at stopping covid in an individual but more effective at stopping community spread.
Disease induced immunity doesn't seem to last long--see Manaus, Brazil. As for antibodies in circulation, that falls off too--hence convalescent plasma can only be collected from recovering patients over a short period of time.
Recent articles have discussed the causes on "long covid" and some of the problems children can get after infection. The virus seems to be able to trigger other antibodies too--in what amounts to a non-specific response. That can make the body go haywire. That seems to be much less of an issue with the vaccines.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/long-covid-how-it-keeps-us-sick-20210701/
Good news! LOL
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2021/07/17/texas-democrats-walk-out-three-test-positive-covid-in-washington-dc/8002121002/
Why, bless your heart
It's what happens when you do a Marion Barry -- hooker and crack in a D.C. hotel room. I await more infections, and some choking to death. Gosh, and here you thought it was only those you hate: blacks, Latinos, whites who aren't rich like you. Funny how microbes don't give a shit. LOL
Boy what hate in your heart. Marion Barry has been dead for quite some time now, the b set him up 30 years ago.
He was your uncle? LOL
They were morons, but look in the mirror.
That's you in the mirror. Funny that.
"Boy, what hate in your heart," wrote the "progressive" who's too stupid to hide her pathetic hypocrisy. LOL
I hate hate. Imagine that.
You are drunk on your "progressive" hatred, hypocrisy, and racism. LOL
What outbreak???? Weak compared too last year. By this time next week, declining cases.
Next week?
Well hope you are right but I would say maybe a 1% chance.
At this point, I am starting to conclude that we need to recognize defeat if idea was to stop covid without having everyone unvaccinated infected ( or near everyone)..
We are just not going to get enough vaccinations soon enough without a good chunk of remaining immunity needed for herd immunity coming from addtl cases and more natural immunity. Not with something that seems as infectious as delta. At some point you need to stop trying to fight a losing battle and manage the retreat.
And they means conceding it is going to spread until enough unvaccinated catch it and get natural immunity. And do what is best accepting that.
Which is give one last chance to let the malingers get vaccinated before we fully reopen with no restrictions no masks and actually in a way encourage spread all thr way up to unless hospitals are overwhelmed ( which I doubt they will be).
Pull the scab off and get this over with one way or the other.
And will not be good but not as bad as you might fear. With vaccinations and natural immunity, we do not have all that many left to go, and they are mostly the young at low risk of dying. And yes there will be some breakthrough cases among those with natural or vaccine immunity, but should be very low death rate there.
Say we have 30% left who are both unvaccinated and never had covid, mostly young . And we need 2/3 or 20% to get covid to get to herd immunity. And I suspect less because some of them just might be innately immune.
If 20% of our nation still has to catch, or about 60-70 million, that is a lot. But if death rate is only. 1% as young ( note taking total ifr not confirmed case ifr) , we are talking another 60 or 70 thousands.
Which just might be inevitable and, if spread over usa and maybe 4 months, will not overwhelm hospitals.
And note if cannot in the end stop this, mitigation to slow makes end result worse. Even not considering cost of restrictions. Because delaying it gives more time for immunity to wear off..