Covid19 went into worldwide retreat from 14th Jan 2021

[everydayupsanddowns]

Looks like new cases are on the rise again globally. Nowhere near the levels we were seeing at the beginning of the year but back above 500K per day. Brazil in particular is in a terrible way. Not the case in some places, eg UK, UAE, Israel and USA, but they have some of the highest vaccination rates. Proof that the vaccines are the answer..??

Reports of a third wave in Europe are particularly worrying

Lots of countries quite rightly locking-down again, but the lockdowns always seem to come too late, and there is such a lag between action and effect. The virus is like one of those supertankers... once it’s got up to speed it takes a long time for it to change direction or slow down.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Do you think these "waves" are just the result of bringing in and then relifting restrictions? Not necessarily a naturally occurring wave of a virus?

That’s how it feels to me. The virus doesn’t spread... it is spread by people interacting. We had a lockdown... the virus was less able to spread, and numbers reduced. We opened up again, and concerns over the economy led to ‘eat out to help out’ encouraging more people to go out and mix. Sure enough a month or two later up rocketed the numbers (it takes quite a while for infection to start spreading exponentially, and a long time for hospital admissions to increase and still longer for it to begin to slow...)

Now... painfully slowly... it has begun to get to under control again, amd we are already champing at the bit to open everything up again.

I only hope the vaccination programme keeps a bit of a lid on the potential rise towards the end of the summer, or we’ll be locking down for another winter I’m afraid.

 

[mikeyB]

As with any global virus epidemic, rates change all the time. There will inevitably be a fall when all the folk who could get it have had it, whether they know or not. And a lot of folk who could get it and die have already died. That's how "Spanish" flu died out - it swept the world, and ran out of folk to infect. And that's without any significant lockdowns or vaccines - but 20 million dead.