Why is Europe improving on the battle against COVID-19, but the US is just getting worse at it?

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On July 24th, the US took a turn for the worse. From that week on, the US has getting worst and worst, almost doubling the fatality rate Let me just share a question that started to bug me a few weeks ago: “Doesn’t it seem strange that the US is reporting average daily COVID-19 deaths in the high hundreds while infection figures keep dropping?” This is a fairly long question, but sums some discussions I’ve been reading around, unfortunately commonly tainted by politics. First, let’s look at what the context. Over the past two months, the US has reported ever lower figures of new infections, and this effect was especially visible on the last couple of weeks, as we can check on the chart above. What is most striking is that on Europe, things are heating up, with new cases popping up literally on every single country, and at very significant rates. On some European countries, like Spain or France, the figure are fast approaching the dreadful scenario from the months of April and May, with infections beating 10 thousand infections per day, and deaths exceeding a hundred in some days. For other countries, like Czechia or Denmark, the number …

Calculating the real number of infections from Covid-19 on some European Countries on June 1st.

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Obtaining the Infection Fatality Rate On the past two weeks two most important studies were made public. One from the Public Health Agency of Sweden1 reporting the calculated real infection fatality rate of Covid-19 in Stockholm, and another from the MIT2 . Both having the same goal: estimating the real infection fatality rate (IFR). This corresponds to the odds of dying from the disease, including those who have mild or no symptoms. How does this differ from the values reported by official figures? Official figures only include the number of people having been tested positive. And people without symptoms, nor with a known contact with another person having tested positive, don’t often get tested, unless it gets into a random population study. With this in mind, the ratio you get with the current figures is known as Case Fatality Rate (CFR), which corresponds to the number of fatalities based on the number of known infections. Knowing the number of how many people went undetected is what allows you to calculate the most import indicator of a pandemic disease: the actual fatality rate. Countries with the lowest CFR puts it at around 3.9%, such as Czechia, where others, such as Italy or Belgium exceeds 10%. …

UK takes second spot of the world’s most unwelcome podium: Covid-19 fatalities per capita. Excluding ONS excessive deaths.

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Remember the day the UK overtook Italy to became the world’s third most affected country by Covid-19 ? It if feels it was just a week or so ago, your internal clock is correct, as it was on May 24th. On June 1st, the UK started to ease the lockdown measures, the same day that 111 people were announced as victims of Covid-19, along with 1590 newly infected. In fact, since May 12th, it has consistently been on the top 2 of the European countries with most daily fatalities per capita, and since May 19th disputes the spot with Sweden, although Sweden has taken the top spot every single day since May 25th. Nevertheless, when comparing the UK’s daily fatality rate with the other most affected countries, namely Spain, the UK shows a huge “advantage”. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the UK would climb another step, overtaking Spain, to become the world’s second most affected country by Covid-19, as measured by fatalities per capita, behind Belgium. Today, the UK reached 58.03 fatalities per 100 000 inhabitants versus Spain’s 58.02. Yet, UK’s fatality rate still significantly exceeds that of Belgium. If we consider that Belgium excessive deaths can totally be …

Sweden jumps into top 5 of the countries most effected by Covid-19

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Things appear not to go smoothly on Sweden’s light contention strategy, as since May 13th it battles with the UK for the Europe’s most daily fatalities per capita, claiming top spot for more than a week. Now, Sweden is still a long way from reaching the heights of Spain or Belgium, but with such a high number of daily fatalities it was bound to jump the rankings of the world’s most affected countries by Covid-19. Which was the case today. Until today, Sweden occupied the sixth spot, right after France. Until today. Today Sweden overcook France, to become the world’s fifth most affected country in the work by Covid-19. However, things don’t end here. Sweden is still suffering more daily fatalities per capita than most of the other countries, specially those on the top5, which means sooner or latter it’s bound to overtake Italy. Remember Italy? The first country to be taken down hard by Covid-19 ? At the time no one would have guessed Sweden would even be compared to Italy, but at the current rate, it will happen in a matter of weeks. So, it was already clear that something it not going ok on Sweden’s strategy. But now the scale …

Sweden’s approach to Covid19 is important for you, even if you don’t agree with it, or even if it isn’t working

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Have you ever felt like an ant, when all other ants are going the other way? This is how the swedes are are now feeling. Not that the game has ended, as it’s barely past the 15 minute mark, but the current result is all but brilliant to Sweden. There are only three possible approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic: Confinement and contention until a vaccine is available. This is the approach taken by most European and western countries plus all Asian developed and not so developed far eastern countries. Mild contention targeting a fast path to herd immunity. The path followed by Sweden. Zigzaging, incoherent and sometimes contradictory policy, as taken my countries with populist governments and or agendas, where we can fit countries like Brazil and the US. Well, to be fair, we only have two possible approaches. Not having an approach cannot be considered one🙃. Let’s have a deeper analysis on the Swedish mild contention approach: Schools and universities remained open Small shops and most commerce continued to do business as usual. Bars and coffees saw little new sanitary recommendations. Nursing homes and other locations with high number of highly vulnerable people were isolated from the general population, but healthcare …

UK overtakes Italy to become the 3rd country in the world with most deaths per capita

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Remember these images ? These images were broadcasted on March 21st. The day Italy reported the most infections in a single day ever, anywhere in the whole world. Never would the UK expect ever to be compared with it. Until it was. And then, it got worst than Italy. Today will be shamelessly known as the the day the UK become the third country1 with most fatalities per capita in the whole world, now behind Spain and the currently undisputed leader, Belgium. Accordingly to the official data released by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, and Italy’s Ministero della Salute, UK’s fatalities per 100 000 inhabitants now total 54.23 which compares to Italy’s 54.22. Although this data is official, doubts have been casted on all, but on all countries. Both Italy and Spain suspect some deaths were not caught, but then then, fatalities in those countries are reports in near real time. In the UK fatalities can take up to 2 weeks to be reported. For fatalities occurring outside hospitals, it can take up to 2 months for it to appear on the ONS statistics. However, the bad news to the UK don’t end here. The other bad news is that pesky green …

US fatalities per capita now exceeds EU’s. UK is fast approaching Italy’s dark figures.

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Covid-19 will be remembered for centuries to come, how the modern world bowed to one of nature’s most insidious killers, in the same way people thought the Titanic to be unsinkable. As with the Titanic, the modern world considered itself unbeatable, immortal and imune to whatever nature would throw at it. Now, with more than half the world’s population locked indoors We realize, nature is, and probably will always be, a force to be reckoned with. It will also be remembered by how some of the world’s leaders miserably failed, in protecting their homelands, their populations and their most vulnerable. Some had excuses. Where the first hit, unprepared, and unknowingly of what was coming from a poorly known disease, although China overcome it, taking one for the few advantages of a totalitarian government, subduing the population and the disease. From western countries, the challenge was to perform equally as well, but without endangering democracy. Spain and Italy were first hit, and took the entire brunt of the disease. President Trump made fun at the poor manner by which the EU was handling the problem. How the virus grazed through Europe’s elders. And specially as the US was performing so much …

Not all masks are the same. Choose the right mask you’ll use during the next 6 months

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Within a number of weeks we’ll all be allowed to go out, unrestricted, to wherever we go. No one knows exactly when, but for sure, we will. With one caveat: we will all wear a face mask. One of the reasons why people are not allowed to go out freely, is exactly the fact you’ll need a face mask, and there aren’t any available, that is, until the health system is properly provisioned with those. And accordingly to recents news, that will still take awhile… In fact, one of the reasons some countries are credited to maintain such a low infection rate (see Czechia and Austria) is the mandatory use of face masks on all public spaces, and apparently there’s no shortage of those in Eastern Europe. So, we’ll need to pick a bunch of them, out of the tens of models available, not all are adequate. Some are just useless, others offer some protection, others protect you and the community, others only you, and all combinations thereof. Let’s have a quick look at them: The cloth mask Many masks fit in this category, but all some characteristics in common: all are made from a couple of layers of fabric. …

Belgium is now the world’s most affected country by Covid-19 (except for Andorra and San Marino)

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Something is very wrong in Belgium. It’s known that Belgium reacted a bit slow to the Covid-19 pandemic, and only entered lock down on March 18th, after 18 people had already died and the number of infected exceeded 1000 people. Nevertheless, 29 days have passed, and things seemed not to have worked, as the following chart depicts: After the initial lockdown, everything seemed to work inline with other countries such as France, UK or the Netherlands. Not that those countries fared extremely well, but were not at the levels of Italy or Spain. Then, around April 9th ( or around March 21st, the date 20 days earlier) something went very wrong. The number of fatalities started to skyrocket. And has continued ever since. From 15 fatalities per 100 000 to 42 fatalities, exceeding those of Italy or Spain, and becoming the world’s most affected country by Covid-19, and the curve is nowhere near becoming flat. This demonstrates that announcing a lockdown is different that enforcing a lockdown. Let’s compare Google’s data from Belgium with other (now) less affected countries, such as Spain. Spain Belgium So, Spain’s lockdown was more strictly implemented than Belgium’s, and not that the figures from Spain are anything …

Updated fatalities chart using NHS England data and where the UK stands

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As the updated NHS England figures are processed, the picture is now a grim one. When adding the HNS England data we clearly see a trend. On all days were we have stable NHS England data, it’s always higher than the value published on gov.uk, except for one. The saddest day was on April 4th, but given the current preliminary figures that record will be broken again, and by a significant margin. Other statistics are now made available. One such cases is the fatality rate, was has consistently been downplayed, but with the updated figures some trends are revealed: actual fatality rate is significantly higher than reported, by more than 10% fatality rate in England more than doubles those of Scotland, Wales or NI Using the updated figures paints a different picture of where the UK stands as compared with other countries. On April 11th, it was thought to be below countries such as the Netherlands, or France. In reality the UK was already far above the level of the Netherlands, and still above those of France.   Lets see how things evolve over the next week.    

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