In 4 weeks, cases worldwide have fallen by 40%; this is worldwide phenomenon - with one notable exception. One nation remains with stubbornly high cases counts - in fact, the very highest cases per capital in the world....
Israel currently has higher cases per capita than any other nation with more than 7 million people and their case count appears to have plateaued while every other nation sees cases rapidly declining or already very low:
Israel's high case count comes despite a hard lockdown and the world's best, by far, rate of vaccination:
Israel's cases are also not an artifact of higher testing - testing has actually declined and the share of test returning positive has increased:
Neighboring regions also are seeing steep case declines to low levels:
I don't know what this means? It could be a coincidence that the nation with the highest rate of vaccination also has the highest incidence of covid. It could be that, during a period of high community transmission, a mass vaccination campaign acts as a superspreader event.
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I like how NPR "explains" that cases have fallen in India because of masks, while also stating that mask mandates were in place before cases rose and that serioprevelance indicates almost 60% of urban populations have already had Covid.
California was the first state to issue a stay at home order, has mandated masks for months, and has been one of the 10 most restrictive states over the past three months; Florida has no state mask mandate, no lockdown and is one of the least restrictive states in the country.
Florida and California are two of the three largest states by population and both have sunny, warm weather and reside on a similar latitude. One has had open theme parks for months; the other has never allowed Disney to open. Let's compare how they are doing...
Cases in California are now 4X higher than in Florida. Both saw a spike in the Summer, but California's late Fall growth in cases is dramatically worse than Florida's:
Four days ago, Oxford University published a report on US state government responses to Covid-19, showing a wide divergence in relative stringency with that divergence growing over time as 1/2 the US states open up and 1/2 continue to lock-down:
This study, if anything, understates the differences between states as I have personally visited 20 states since this Summer and the day-to-day experiences in Alabama or Idaho vs. Washington or Nevada are dramatically and obviously different.
Euromomo.eu shows excess mortality in the Spring more than 2X that seen in the fall, despite wider spread:
Similarly, the CDC estimated excess mortality in the Spring was about 2X that seen in Summer or Fall, despite ever widening spread:
Why has Covid become so dramatically less lethal over time? One primary reason is that doctors are no longer actively mistreating patients: wsj.com/articles/hospi…
It has now been 4 weeks since "cases" peaked in the northern Great Plains states; they have now fallen nearly 50% since mid-November despite mild restrictions and limited mask mandates:
Cases in the Rocky Mountain states appear to have peaked one week later (before Thanksgiving):
The southern Plains states seem to have hit a plateau before Thanksgiving and may have begun their inevitable descent: