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Latest, 21st July 2020

Where are we now? The Global Pandemic can be seen in four clear parts.

1) East Asian countries who went into lockdown hard and early, based on their experiences of SARS and a cultural acceptance of collective action have weathered the storm effectively with, relatively speaking, minimal damage.

2) Western European countries who dithered stumbled and suffered from underestimating nature and over-estimating their own competence. This should be a humbling experience for these old countries.

3) Latin American and South Asian nations struggling with relative poverty, poor infrastructure and, in places, eccentric leadership. These countries have death tolls that are growing more slowly than the Europeans' but have the potential to max out at unimaginable figures.

4) The rest - African, Central Asian and East European nations. It seems inevitable that they will go through the same cycle in due course and if/when they do countries like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo could have awful fatalities.

I make no comment about the USA. It serves only as a template to the world for now not to manage the spread of this virus.

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Updated 21st July 2020
Europe is pretty much done. It will rumble on and on, here and there for a long time but it is now fast becoming old news. For Europe now the big question is about the timing of an effective vaccine vs the winter flu.

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Updated 21st July 2020
For the UK my model shows that the UK has not yet returned to the projected death rate for 2020 although it is within the 5year max/min range. We are still running excess deaths which at the moment stand at 75,201.

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Updated 21st July 2020
My latest projection is holding up and we're still on for an 11th August 'success' date. We won't actually get to a sustainable zero because there will be outbreaks and flare-ups. I think anything less than 50 a day over a period of time will be seen as acceptable by the political class. I'm using the 7-day rolling average figures here for totals so the numbers are underestimated a little.

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Updated 21st July 2020
There is trouble in Russia. Currently, riots and protests in Eastern Russia are an irritation to Putin at a time when he is changing the constitution to allow him to serve two more terms as President. The Russian curve is troubling and the numbers are, to the sceptical, rather muted. I am minded to drop this chart next time and add Russia to the group of countries with eccentric leaders.

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Updated 21st July 2020
In a bizarre twist of common sense, it could be that President Trump's feeble showing in the opinion polls sees him reach for popularity by actually doing something about the virus. In Brazil, President Bolsonaro has contracted the virus.; one of the more delicious plot developments of 2020.

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NEW July 7th 2020
Here's a new thing: the difference between the European curve and the Latin curve is striking. Following the work I did last time on the Rich/Urban vs Poor/Rural countries I've sprinkled some magic dust on the numbers so I can compare apples with fruit-cakes and the average of the two curves is shown here. The main impact of the Latin curve is to lengthen the timeline considerably. The Europe curve goes from zero to zero in about 100/120 days. The Latin curve looks like it could be closer to 300 days. If true this will have some serious impacts for everyone. More on this in a post later.

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Updated 21st July 2020
This is not a virus that hits poor countries especially, or indeed unhealthy countries or large-population countries harder than others. So far it's a first world problem...that is made worse, or better, by the quality of political leadership.

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Updated 21st July 2020
And in answer to a reader's question, here is the distribution of Asian countries on the same axes as above. For now, this is not an Asian problem.

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NEW 21st July 2020
Here are three different curves. Brazil is a 'flat top' and trundling along at 1000 deaths a day. India is following a more conventional, long curve, the 'Latin curve' seen in South America and is some way off a peak, and Iran has had a genuine, bona fide, second wave and has yet to hit its second peak. Of all these the Iranian, 'double hump', or Bactrian curve, worries me most.

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Longer posts about Covid19
#1 Lies, damned lies and...you know the rest 4th April
#2 Lies, damned lies and Covid19 5th April
#3 Lies, damned lies and....mountains 20th April
#4 L,DL&...WTF? 22nd April
#5 Lies....oh, you know the rest. 29th April
#6 Land Ahoy! 28th May
#7 Where the nuts come from! 10th June
#8 A global pandemic? 22nd June
#9 Batsh*t cray-cray 15th July