"Don't Let It Dominate Your Life" by Nancy Ohanian Confirmed reports of new COVID cases on Thursday confirmed that the whole world is in the midst of a raging-- not petering out-- pandemic. There were over 390,000 confirmed new cases, spread out worldwide in countries that resist mask wearing. There were just 11 new cases in China, 570 in Japan, 110 in South Korea, 13 in Thailand, 27 in Cuba, 3 in Singapore, 2 in Vietnam, 12 in Hong Kong and just 1 in Taiwan. People in these countries don't whine that masks taking away their freedom. They know a lot better than some ugly bearded freak with a gun collection in Ohio what an infringement of their freedom looks like-- and they know it isn't wearing masks to protect society from a deadly viral plague. In the parts of the world unwilling or incapable of protecting themselves from the coronavirus, new case counts were horrific on Wednesday (along with number of cases per million residents:
• U.S. +64,312 (24,775 cases per million residents)• India +60,365 (5,322 cases per million residents)• France +30,621 (12,397 cases per million residents)• Brazil +29,498 (24,278 cases per million residents)• U.K. +18,980 (9,908 cases per million residents)• Argentina +17,096 (20,944 cases per million residents)• Russia +13,754 (9,278 cases per million residents)• Spain +13,318 (20,807 cases per million residents)• Czechia +9,720 (13,907 cases per million residents)• Italy +8,804 (6,314 cases per million residents)• Belgium +8,271 (15,642 cases per million residents)• Poland +8,099 (3,962 cases per million residents)• Netherlands +7,791 (11,895 cases per million residents)• Germany +7,074 (4,159 cases per million residents)• Colombia +6,823 (18,358 cases per million residents)• Ukraine +5,062 (6,442 cases per million residents)• Iran +4,616 (6,143 cases per million residents)• Indonesia +4,411 (1,273 cases per million residents)• Mexico +4,056 (6,413 cases per million residents)• Romania +4,013 (8,776 cases per million residents)• Nepal +3,749 (4,157 cases per million residents)• Iraq +3,587 (10,297 cases per million residents)• Morocco +3,317 (4,419 cases per million residents)• Peru +2,977 (25,887 cases per million residents)• Switzerland +2,613 (8,223 cases per million residents)• Jordan +2,423 (2,986 cases per million residents)• Canada +2,345 (5,067 cases per million residents)• Philippines +2,261 (3,170 cases per million residents)• Portugal +2,101 (9,157 cases per million residents)• South Africa +1,770 (11,730 cases per million residents)• Israel +1,701 (32,639 cases per million residents)
European cities are moving back into lockdowns. MarketWatch reported that "London has joined a raft of other European cities plunged into tighter COVID-19 restrictions, while in Germany there are further controls on gatherings, and nighttime curfews are being implemented in nine French cities. Millions of households in London will be banned from mixing indoors with other households on Saturday, as European leaders battle to prevent the spread of a second wave of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus."
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who has been pushing hard for tighter restrictions, warned on Thursday that the virus was spreading rapidly “in every corner of our city”-- a large number of boroughs now has an average of 100 cases per 100,000 people. The U.K. has one of the highest death tolls from the disease in Europe, at 43,155, because of the high density of people in its cities and its high level of overweight citizens. The U.K. has implemented restrictions in three tiers, with the third tier the most severe. London, which has a population of nine million and is Europe’s wealthiest city, has been moved up to Tier 2, which bans the mixing of households. Schools, shops, and pubs remain open. Khan warned the capital has “a difficult winter ahead … But, just as we’ve always done throughout our city’s great history, I know we’ll get through this dark time by pulling together.”
In France, starting tonight, Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble, Montpellier, Saint Etienne and Rouen have curfews from 9pm to 6am. Violators will be fined $160 for a first offense, $1,760 for a second offense. As for tourists or, more likely, would-be tourists... "Despite the holiday season now being in full swing, some [EU countries] are now shutting down again." Tourists are allowed in from Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay and China. Reporter Jennifer Calfas tried explaining to Wall Street Journal readers why COVID is on the rise again in the U.S. Short answer: fatigue, colder weather, eased restrictions. We just experienced a 7th consecutive day of reported new cases over 50,000 daily. She spoke with epidemiologists and public-health researchers about what's causing the spike.
The virus has spread to more rural counties and other communities, exposing vulnerable populations that hadn’t yet experienced it significantly and who are now reacting instead of taking steps to prevent the virus, public-health researchers said. Some people have grown tired of restrictions on their movements and might be taking more risks than they did in the spring, they said. Mixed and inconsistent messaging over preventive measures has sowed confusion and complacency. Some local governments have eased restrictions on businesses and requirements to wear masks. Meanwhile, college students returned to campuses, leading to some spreading of the virus, and the onset of cooler weather has led many Americans indoors, where the virus is more transmittable, the public-health researchers said. ...Daily case-count tallies are likely to increase or remain at high levels without concerted use of such strategies as enhanced testing, widespread mask-wearing and clear, consistent messaging, epidemiologists and public-health researchers said. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” said Jewel Mullen, the associate dean for health equity at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. “The longer it takes for us to adopt behaviors to lower collective risk, the longer it’s going to take for us to recover socially, economically from a pandemic standpoint.” New case counts are high nationally, but it is far from uniform across the country; often one area surges when another improves. While cases have ebbed in Sunbelt states like Arizona, they have gone up throughout parts of the rest of the country, especially the upper Midwest. And community transmission has persisted in states like Florida and Texas where cases have dropped recently. “It’s almost like we never ended the first wave,” said Marissa Levine, a professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. “We may be going into the third hump of the first wave.” On a national scale, the U.S. never saw the same substantial drops in cases experienced in European countries before infections rose there again. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent report that divisiveness and mixed messages over mask-wearing might have contributed to a rise in coronavirus cases among younger people in a Wisconsin county. Another CDC report found increases in positivity rates among older age groups followed surges in younger populations. This week, a judge upheld Gov. Tony Evers’s mask mandate and public-health emergency after three residents challenged the actions. Without a vaccine or a therapeutic breakthrough, prevention tools are the best approach for controlling the spread. Precautions like wearing masks and maintaining distance help lower risk of transmission but don’t entirely eliminate it, especially without full compliance, according to health officials. “We have been saying it for months now that if everybody doesn’t do it, we’re not going to have this huge, overwhelming success,” said Jasmine Marcelin, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and infectious-diseases physician. “It’ll be in fits and starts.” Communities might continue to slide back and forth between phases of the pandemic, Dr. Marcelin warned. Compliance fatigue has been seen as a contributing factor to the second wave of infections that has spread across Europe in recent weeks. Across the Continent, restrictions are snapping back into place as cases rise and hospitals once again fill up. In the U.S., swelling cases have already spurred record-high hospitalizations in states including Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Montana and Utah. The U.S. recorded the highest number of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 since the end of August on Wednesday, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project. More deaths and hospitalizations are likely to follow as cases edge higher and potentially shift from younger people to more vulnerable populations, a situation that is already playing out in Europe. The latest projections from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation indicate that nearly 180,000 additional deaths could occur in the U.S. by Feb. 1. Health-care professionals are able to provide better care when not overwhelmed with patients or short on critical supplies, said Ryan Demmer, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. “If we get back to 70,000 a day and we get beyond that, then the system probably is not really prepared to absorb those additional hospitalizations,” he said. “And then when you can’t provide adequate care, the death rates get worse.” Epidemiologists and public-health leaders have continued to urge Americans to stay vigilant to avoid this outcome. “The most frustrating thing for me as an epidemiologist is to know that we can make a change and we can make a difference in the trends. We know what to do,” said Loren Lipworth, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The virus is not going away.”
