Covid19 went into worldwide retreat from 14th Jan 2021

[Amity Island]

Question is; what hapened on around the 14th January 2021 throughout the world that has caused cases to drop by 45% worldwide?

Scentists have given the reason that natural immunity (which studies now show does give long term protection, at least for as long as the studies have been carried out for currently stands at 6 months) has now been achieved, with far more people having had it than officially recognised but this doesn't explain the 14th Jan 2021 common date.

Pressure on NHS Intensive care units is FINALLY easing

Public Health England figures published today reveal 146 out of 149 areas (98 per cent) recorded a drop in weekly positive tests in the seven days to January 31.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Why ARE coronavirus cases falling in the US with 44% drop in 3 weeks?

On Wednesday, a total of 110,679 new coronavirus cases were reported with a 7-day rolling average of 135,904, a 44% decline from the average three weeks earlier.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Robin]

But they are rising in Portugal.

 

[Docb]

Must admit I would be looking to see if there has been any change in the way data is collected before shouting yippee.

 

[Robin]

Well they are very naughty! they should be following everyone else...

Actually I just checked, not having looked for a couple,of days, and Portugal is indeed now falling, but they are way behind everyone else.

 

[Robin]

Hi Robin,

What's your take on this strange phenomenon?

I think that behind the overall 'average' figures, there is a lot of difference in timings in individual areas. For example, if I look at the figures for West Oxfordshire where I live, the overall trend is a gradual decline, but some areas have markedly dropped, and other areas, such as our town and the neighbouring one, which were lower than average, have actually risen in the past couple of weeks. I expected the rise we got after the November lockdown ended, because everyone seemed to go Christmas shopping, and I would expect the fall since the post Christmas lockdown. I suspect other countries who celebrate Christmas and then had to lock down when they saw figures rising have seen the same, but I wouldn’t like to guess at what has caused any rises and falls worldwide.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Someone like @Robin or @Bruce Stephens might be better able to understand it.

No, it seems a bit mysterious to me too. I doubt it's change in testing.

Maybe some kind of seasonality effect: northern hemisphere had rising cases starting with winter, and we all ended up realising we really needed to do something at about the same time? (I know it's more than just the northern hemisphere but we can ignore NZ and Australia, pretty much. India's also showing a reduction but it looks quite small, so maybe unrelated?)

Maybe there's some connections between countries? Not so much people travelling between them, but leaders feeling it would be OK to act in particular ways because other countries are acting?

 

[Bruce Stephens]

What did you understand from the w.h.o advice given on the day the cases suddenly started falling worldwide? Just co-incidence?

It looks a bit technical to me. I don't think it changed testing in the UK in any way, did it?

Did they announce in that link that the world should stop testing those without symptoms?

That doesn't seem to be what the advice is saying. Rather, it's saying one should be cautious (and test again if possible) in cases without symptoms. So the advice seems more clinical (how one should treat a patient) rather than advising about statistical measuring? (But it's possible I'm misreading it.)

 

[Robin]

On the face of it, it looks they are informing the worldwide healthcare profession responsible for pcr testing to only test those who have symptoms and stop testing those who are asymptomatic, which as I understand it, testing asymptomatic people is known to give a high rate of false positives.

I don’t think it says that at all. What it seems to boil down to is, the WHO telling users of the PCR tests to make sure they’ve read the instructions! As cases fall, the chances of a test being a false positive increase, and it seems that there are instructions to make sure you alter the threshold for declaring a test definitely positive where there’s a weak viral load, as cases fall. So it’s a reaction to falling cases, not a trigger for them.
I have no idea why cases are falling, other than to suggest that most of the Western Northern hemisphere celebrates Christmas and New Year, when people mixed together more, shopped more etc, followed by much stricter lockdowns in many places.
The case numbers here have only really fallen to the levels they were at after the November lockdown, so I suspect it’s the lockdown that’s having an effect here, rather than a 'magic'date.

 

[Robin]

That would make two incredible coincidences

Coincidences happen more often than you think, especially if the parties involved are dealing with the same problem, in the same climate, with the same sort of culture of having some sort of winter festival to get you through the short days.
I don’t know why the WHO delivered its message when it did, but it was a world wide message, and probably more relevant to countries whose cases were already low.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Surely this cannot be purely coincidental?

Can't it?

Like the worldwide lockdowns. We're they too just a world wide coincidental simultaneous response?

Of course not. Multiple countries had what they could see was an infectious disease, so wanted to reduce its spread.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Do you not think this could all be a global exercise in pandemic preparedness?

Doubt it. It's been hugely expensive for an exercise. And the world just isn't that well coordinated. Is the virus fake, and if so how do you keep all the scientists quiet? And if the virus is real then it's surely a pandemic more than it is an exercise.

Vastly more likely that it is what it seems to be: a real pandemic that, as you say, the UK's handled pretty badly.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

I mean, they have taken this opportunity to start an exercise in global preparedness.

Well, obviously they'll look at that, yes. A pandemic has been high on the list of possible serious threats for a while so I presume there'll be a variety of actions to try and make sure we're better prepared for the next one. And presumably some of that will be useful for other things too.

Everything that happens is a chance to practice reacting to that thing.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

First man in the world to get new covid vaccine was.....wait for it.......William Shakespeare!

I'm guessing that someone might well have influenced that. (If you had a list of people to be vaccinated and that name was on it there'd be quite a big temptation to put him first. So yes, there's an element of coincidence, but the coincidence was just that someone on that list had a slightly amusing (in the context) name. That's probably not all that unlikely.)

 

[atoll]

With all this staying at home,i have noticed that nobody is following me around any more,and there are fewer UFO sightings in our area......

 

[atoll]

Atoll,

What are you refering to specifically?

The incidence of coincidence,strange lights in the sky and the inter-connectedness of naturally occurring phenomena......

 

[Eddy Edson]

(That's a joke, btw 🙂

 

[Robin]

France seems to be bucking the trend, especially Nice.

Coronavirus: High Covid rates delay France and Germany easing

France and Germany struggle to get schools back to normal as infection rates remain high.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Robin]

Flattish overall, though. Similar picture in Brazil. Worldwide, new cases are running at around half of what they were a month ago.

Oh, I agree, and there will always be some variation in the rates at which different countries get to grips with their cases. I was really trying to address the original thread title, which was that there was some mysteriously significant date on which cases worldwide started to fall.

 

[Robin]

Robin,

You seem deeply dissapointed about the fact that cases have been falling worldwide from around 14th Jan? If you look hard enough, i'm sure there'll be somewherre in the world that didn't follow that trend, like when you said cases in Portugal were rising, but had actually fallen.

The cases in France were already right down at the levels we are are now seeing in the UK. Clearly not as much scope for dropping as the rest of the world had with their high numbers of cases (positive tests).

It seems there are many, many people are averse to good news, and will look for any possible reason not to be delighted at the news.

When did I say I was disappointed? I’d love there to be a continuing downward trend worldwide. The question you raised at the start of the thread was ‘what happened around the 14th January to cause cases to drop' , and the answer I’ve been trying to give is, 'nothing of significance about that date particularly, just a redoubled effort around the world to get a grip on things, with greater or lesser success, and with the expected fluctuations. You seemed to be looking for a greater pattern and significance than I think there was, that was all.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

The government is being blamed for not imposing restrictions for political reasons

Historians are going to have a field day with how political manoeverings affected the decision making and handling of the pandemic and subsequent mortality rates and impact in different countries