14/3/21: COVID19 Update: U.S. vs EU27 comparatives

 Previous posts covered updates for Covid19 pandemic stats:

• Worldwide data: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/12321-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html, 
• Europe and the EU27 countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/13221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html, 
• Most impacted countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/13321-covid19-update-most-impacted.html, and
• BRIICS dynamics: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/13321-covid19-update-briics.html.

In this post, let's take a look at the U.S. vs EU27 comparatives (some of these were touched upon in the previous posts).

So, five charts and a table. Starting with weekly cases:

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has experienced three waves, against the EU27's two. The EU27's 2nd wave appears to have crested in week 45 of 2020, while the U.S.' current wave continued to rise through week 1 of 2021. 

Over the last 4 weeks, however, the U.S. case counts have been running 783,315 lower than those of the EU27 on cumulated basis. Furthermore, starting from week 8 of 2021, there is some early evidence of a potential Wave 3 starting in the EU27.

Weekly death counts are harder to interpret:

The trend in EU27 Wave 2 deaths counts indicates significant decline from the relatively flat peak that run from week 48/2020 through week 5/2021. The decline, however, only takes the EU27 back to the average of weeks 44 and 45 - the phase of rapid acceleration in Wave 2. The rate of decline has fallen dramatically in the last two weeks.  

The U.S. data is extremely volatile, but the peak of Wave 3 can be timed to week 7/2021, with plateau around the peak running weeks 1/2021-7/2021.

Cumulated deaths per capita trend:

• Since the start of Wave 2 in the EU27 (Wave 3 in the U.S.), EU27 deaths per capita have been converging with those in the U.S. through week 48/2020.
• From week 1/2021, U.S. deaths per capita started once again to diverge from those in the EU27.
• In the latest data, week 9 of 2021, U.S. excess deaths (population size adjusted) relative to the EU27 stand at 108,676, down from a peak of 117,345 in week 7 of 2021.

Mapping U.S. excess mortality compared to the EU27 and Europe:

• In highly simplified terms, the U.S. pandemic experience has been associated with a cumulative excess mortality, compared to the EU27 and Europe of between 108,676 and 182,892 cases, respectively, based solely on differences in population sizes.
• If older European and EU27 demographics are factored in, these excess U.S. deaths rise to 121,718 and 210,326, respectively.
• Both gaps have now resumed their rise, despite more robust vaccination strategy in the U.S.

The above figures are striking. In Vietnam War, the U.S. carried combat casualties of 47,434 and total casualties of 58,318 dead. The pandemic excess deaths toll compared to the EU27 is more than 2 times the total death toll of Vietnam War. 

Where the U.S. is performing better than the EU27 is in terms of overall mortality rate per positive Covid19 case: 

In both, the U.S. and the EU27, new cases have become progressively less fatal through week 34 of 2020. This is most likely accounted for by improved and earlier diagnostics and treatments, as well as by increased share of infections detected in younger patients. These effects were exhausted around week 35 of 2020.

The 2nd wave of the pandemic in the EU27 was associated with a significant initial increase in severity. A smaller increase took place in the U.S. in the 3rd wave. Overall, the most recent wave of the pandemic saw relative uplift in the EU27 mortality rate, while the U.S. mortality rate continued to decline. U.S. trend remains power-law, implying sustained decreases in mortality of new cases over time, while the EU27 trend has shifted toward a polynomial since Week 53 of 2020, implying rising risk of higher mortality, in line with the differences in the EU27 vs U.S. demographics.

Now, a summary table of key statistics:

The above is self-explanatory. The U.S. performs worse than the EU27 on all population-adjusted metrics. 

Here is the degree of relationship between deaths per 1 million population in the U.S. and the EU27 as linked to the Worldwide numbers:

Through the Wave 3 (U.S.) and Wave 2 (EU27), the relationship is effectively the same, with somewhat weaker connection between the EU27 and World rates than between the U.S. and World rates. 

13/3/21: COVID19 Update: BRIICS

Previous posts covered updates for Covid19 pandemic stats:

• Worldwide data: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/12321-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html, 
• Europe and the EU27 countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/13221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html, and
• Most impacted countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/13321-covid19-update-most-impacted.html

In this update, let's take a look at the dynamics of the pandemic in BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa) group of countries.

First, weekly case counts:

Brazil is leading BRIICS into what appears to be a new wave, Wave 4 of the pandemic. All other BRIICS countries are showing sustained moderation in new cases. There is also a much smaller uptick in new cases in India.

A similar picture emerges from weekly deaths data:

A summary table of per capita cases and deaths, as well as mortality rates.

One feature of the above dynamics is the state of uncertainty these highlight in the Emerging and Developing economies with respect to the recent improvements in the pandemic numbers. Sitting in the West, it is, perhaps (depending on the location) easy to slip into a state of overconfidence and complacency, as vaccines become more widely distributed and politicians trumpet the sight of 'normalcy' on the horizon. The problem with this worldview is three-fold:

1. This pandemic will not go away until we reach - globally - levels of vaccinations and infections that deliver global 'herd immunity', which would require 90%+ immunity cover; and
2. As long as there are large pools of the virus in the world at large, there will be higher likelihood (note: we do not know probability) of virus mutations that can render acquired immunity irrelevant, and
3. We are currently not doing anything near enough to deliver vaccines to the countries outside the Advanced economies world.  

13/3/21: COVID19 Update: Most impacted countries

 In previous posts, I covered updates for Covid19 pandemic figures for:

• Worldwide data: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/12321-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html, and
• Europe and the EU27 countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/13221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html.

Now, world's worst hit countries and regions.

World's 5 worst impacted countries by the number of cases per capita (the first table above), with ranks 1 = worst:

1. Andora
2. Montenegro
3. Gibraltar
4. Czechia
5. San Marino

The U.S. ranks 9th worst in the world - the only country with more than 100 million population. There are three countries with population over 10 million but below 100 million on the list: Belgium (15th) and Portugal (11th), plus Czechia.

World's 5 worst impacted countries by the number of deaths per capita (the second table above), with ranks 1 = worst:

1. Gibraltar
2. San Marino
3. Czechia
4. Slovenia
5. Belgium

The U.S. ranks 12th in the world - the only country with more than 100 million population in the list of worst-impacted in terms of deaths per capita. Notably, there are two countries with population between 50 million and 99 million on the list of the worst impacted countries by deaths per capita: Italy (ranked 8th worst in the world), and the UK (ranked 6th worst in the world). There are further 4 countries on the list with population over 10 million, but less than 50 million: Belgium and Czechia already referenced above, plus Portugal (ranked 11th), and Span (ranked 14th).

Two tables above summarize key statistics for the countries with more than 250,000 cases of Covid19 recorded. The table also provides overall rankings for these countries in terms of their performance across three metrics: cases per capita, deaths per capita and deaths per case.

Notably, ten worst countries based on these combined metrics are (once again, rank = 1 implies the worst overall performance):

1. Belgium
2. UK
3. Italy
4. Hungary (tied with Italy)
5. Portugal
6. Czechia
7. Spain
8. U.S.
9. Bulgaria (tied with U.S.)
10. Peru

Across major regions:

Note: in the above table, regions are ranked as countries, though countries' rankings do not include regions. Thus, if the EU27 was treated as a country, it would rank 19th worst in the list of countries. If we remove EU27 member states from the list, the EU27 itself would rank 9th worst in the list, just below the U.S. which continues to perform worse than the EU27, but only marginally. 

Finally, countries' and groups' shares of deaths relative to their share of world population:

The U.S. is the second worst performing major country with its ratio of its share of world deaths to its share of world's population standing at 4.7. The UK is the worst, with a ratio of 5.6 and the EU27 third worst with a ratio of 3.8. 

13/2/21: COVID19 Update: Europe and EU27

Updating Covid19 data for Europe and EU27 for the period through Thursday this week. In line with global data trends (covered here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/12321-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html), Europe and the EU27 are starting to show some tentative signs of a risk of new wave of the pandemic emerging.

• Both Europe and EU27 have experienced two waves of the pandemic, with the second wave characterized by two key features: 1) long and slow decline in the new cases counts, lasting from the peak of the wave around Week 45 of 2020; and 2) Re-acceleration in the wave into another local peak at Week 1 of 2021 and bottoming out in Week 6.
• Since Week 7, we are in a potential start of Wave 3, as noted in the chart above.

• Both Europe and EU27 are indicating the bottoming out of Wave 2 around Week 9 of 2021 in terms of death counts.
• Weekly death counts are yet to show the potential start of Wave 3 that appears to be showing in the weekly case counts data.
• Some states in Europe use different methodologies for identifying Covid19-related deaths. During earlier periods of the pandemic, this caused significant divergence in reported mortality rates. This divergence was eliminated in the second wave of the pandemic. So far through the second wave, mortality rates in the EU27 slightly exceed those in Europe as a whole.

As noted in the table above, this week's counts of new cases are up 12% on 4 weeks-average in Europe and up 16% in the EU27. This is the worst performance for any region, save Oceania, where data quality is highly unreliable. Death counts dynamics clearly lag new cases dynamics, and it remains to be seen if the more recent uplifts in new cases do indeed mark a new wave of the pandemic.

12/3/21: COVID19 Update: Worldwide Data

Updating charts for weekly worldwide numbers covering the Covid19 pandemic, here is the data through Thursday this week:

• In terms of case counts: there is some ambiguity in timing the waves of the pandemic, driven by the dynamics of the new cases and, to a lesser extent, deaths.
• Globally, there is no doubt, however, that we have exited Wave 3 that started around Week 34 of 2020, peaked in Week 1 of 2021, and, it appears to have bottomed out in Week 7 of 2021.
• The latest level of new infections remains well above Waves 1 and 2 peaks. 
• More ominously, since Week 8 of 2021, we are seeing a potential re-emergence of a new wave, Wave 4.

• Weekly death counts have also peaked in Week 3 of 2021, marking the end of Wave 3. 
• However, the latest death counts are still well above peaks of Waves 1 and 2, and as is the case with new cases, last two weeks have witnessed a new uplift in the deaths counts, potentially marking the beginning of a new wave.

• Recent decreases in mortality rate are most likely attributable to three key drivers: (1) earlier detection of cases due to improved testing; (2) younger demographics of those with confirmed infections; and (3) improved treatments in the earlier stages of the disease.
• The decrease in mortality appears to have stabilized and slightly reversed in the first 5 weeks of 2021.

Combined evidence suggests moderation in the global pandemic has been ongoing for some time now, however, new cases are rising once again across most major regions:

The good news is, we are out of the Wave 3 of the pandemic. The bad news is, even with significant in-roads in terms of vaccinations, we are still seeing an uptick in new cases in the last two weeks.

15/2/21: Pump & Dump, Illicit Finance and Market Inefficiency: Cryptos under Review

 A fascinating fresh survey of microeconomics literature on crypto currencies: "The Microeconomics of Cryptocurrencies" by Hanna Halaburda, Guillaume Haeringer, Joshua Gans, Neil Gandal (CESifo Working Paper 8841, 2021, NBER version link here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27477).

The paper is really too extensive to summarize here, so I encourage everyone interested in cryptos to read it. I can, however, offer some non-priority ordered comments on some of the passages I find interesting and novel.

Let's start with 'efficiency' and the 'nothing-at-stake problem'. Authors reference Saleh (2019) which derives "sufficient conditions that guarantee that consensus" to fork is an equilibrium. "Saleh then derives two additional results. 

1. "First, restricting the ability to large stakeholders facilitates and speeds up consensus in case of a fork. The intuition is that [large] stakeholders have the most to lose from a disagreement, i.e., from the persistence of two or more branches." This seems to me a built-in incentives mechanism for increasing concentration of holdings of cryptos. Just as monopolistic power can lead to cartelization and collusion, so is the need for faster / more efficient consensus on development can lead to market dominance and concentration. The side effect of this would be likely reduced liquidity and also likely manipulation of exchange rates. Neither is good for cryptos susceptible to concentration becoming actual money (unit of account, unit of storage, unit of exchange).
2. Second, "Saleh finds that the lower the miners' reward the better. The reason behind this counter-intuitive result is that low rewards enable the accumulation of vested interest in the blockchain (i.e., miners have less incentives to cash out their tokens). Given this, preserving one's vested interest in the blockchain (the tokens) increase the incentives to favor consensus." This is ugly. It further compounds holdings concentration and reduces liquidity. Worse, by inducing longer holding time horizons, it risks potential over-reaction to price movements in the longer run, so that markets price discovery can be severely restricted, and financial bubbles can form and inflate faster and more viciously.

Another issue, relating to efficiency, is transaction costs: the paper reviews Huberman et al. (2019) on this. There are several problems relating to the Bitcoin system capacity to process and record information that relates to the way transaction fees are being priced and charged. These are largely consistent also with Easley et al. (2019). One is that "miners are not only engaged into a hashing race, but they also strategically select transactions to process in order to grab the highest fees." Another is that the system requires congestion to generate fees. The third is that once block rewards are exhausted, the system can lead to concentration of market power as miners will rely solely on transaction fees to exist. This power concentration can lead to higher costs of transactions, and "may result in turn in a weakening of the system's safeguards against double-spending".  Lastly, "if all users pay the fee, the deviation to no fee is very costly, because it automatically puts the no fee transaction at the very end of the queue. This cost may be higher than the fee itself." In other words, in the "all users pay" environment, system congestion can lead to highly costly delays in processing of information.

User adoption: "Foley et al. (2019) find that approximately one-quarter of bitcoin users are involved in illegal activity, which they estimate to represent 46% of bitcoin transactions. Based on their estimates, the illegal use of bitcoin generates approximately $76 billion of illegal activity per year. In terms of comparison, they note that the scale of the US and European markets for illegal drugs is only slightly larger! They do find that since 2016 the proportion of bitcoin activity associated with illegal trade has declined, but the absolute amount of activity (in USD) has continued to increase."

"One example of illegal activity that currently flourishes with Bitcoin is "ransomware" attacks in which criminals exploit vulnerabilities in computer networks to "lock" files so that the user cannot access them. As documented in an article in the New York Times by Nathaniel Popper, in 2019, more than 200,000 organizations submitted files that had been hacked in a ransomware attack. This was a 40 percent increase from the year before,"

The literature on the subject is "consistent with what we know about adoption by large merchants. According to the Economist magazine using data from Morgan Stanley, in 2018, only three of the largest 500 online retailers accept Bitcoin for payments", which is down from five such retailers accepting Bitcoin in 2017. "The conventional wisdom for the lack of adoption of Bitcoin as a payment system is that very few "legal" goods are purchased using Bitcoin because its value is not stable and the system is very slow in processing transactions."

User intent: "Most of the empirical research we discussed... suggest that currently, bitcoin demand is driven by speculation alongside likely illegal intent. A broader claim about bitcoin demand is that it is used as a hedge against inflation" (or as a form of 'digital gold'). The paper argues that BTC/USD pricing of July 2019 or something around USD9,630 per BTC would be consistent with all cryptocurrencies taken as whole replacing 100% of the privately held investment gold in the world for the gold price of USD 1,444 per ounce. As we say before running a Category V rapid... "Good luck on the down".

Pump and dump coins: "Hamrick et al. (2018) present compelling evidence of pervasive pump-and-dump schemes resulting from a systematic analysis of multiple datasets ... they identify more than 3,000 pump-and-dump schemes over a just 6 month period in 2018." 

14/2/21: COVID19 Update: Sweden and Nordics

Prior posts on COVID19 stats updates covered:

• Global data and trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html;
• European & EU27 data and trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html; 
• Data and trends for the most impacted countries and regions: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-most-impacted.html; 
• Data on COVID19 dynamics in BRIICS countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-briics.html; and
• COVID19 stats comparing US and EU27 & Europe: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-us-vs-eu27.html.

Lastly, let's run through comparatives for COVID19 dynamics in Sweden vis-a-vis the rest of the Nordics.

No matter how you define the Nordics:

• As Sweden's closest land-linked neighbors of Finland and Norway (Nordics 1); or
• Adding to the two above Estonia and Iceland (Nordics 2); or
• Expanding the set to also include Netherlands and Denmark

there is only one conclusion than can be drawn from the above charts: Sweden is not doing too well in terms of cases recorded and in terms of deaths recorded through the pandemic so far.  Sweden's mortality rate per capita is substantially (86%) higher than that of the Nordics 3. 

Here is just how poor Sweden's performance has been:

14/2/21: COVID19 Update: U.S. vs EU27 comparatives

In previous posts, I covered the latest data for weekly Covid19 pandemic dynamics for:

• Global data and trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html;
• European & EU27 data and trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html; 
• Data and trends for the most impacted countries and regions: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-most-impacted.html; and
• Data on COVID19 dynamics in BRIICS countries: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-briics.html.

Now, as usual, EU27 (and Europe) comparatives to the U.S.

Start with new cases (weekly totals): 

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has experienced three waves, against the EU27's two. The EU27's 2nd wave appears to have crested in week 45 of 2020, while the U.S.' current wave continued to rise until Week 1 of 2021. Over the last 8 weeks, US new cases exceeded those in the EU27 by 3,574,708 and population-size adjusted deaths by 29,150.

Next, weekly deaths:

The EU27's 2nd wave appears to have crested in week 48 of 2020 in terms of deaths, while the U.S.' current, third, wave continued to rise through week 3 of 2021. The EU27 weekly deaths counts show little signs of significant moderation since the Wave 2 peak, however, and are still running above Wave 1 peak.

Neither the U.S., nor the EU27 show any significant signs of deaths moderation that can be expected to occur in line with decline in new cases and vaccinations. This is surprising, because EU27 new cases moderated substantially since the peak of Wave 2.

Cumulated deaths per capita:

Since the start of Wave 2 in the EU27 (Wave 3 in the U.S.), EU27 deaths per capita have been converging with those in the U.S.

At the start of the EU27 Wave 2, U.S. total deaths per capita exceeded those in the EU27 by 87%. In week 5 of 2021, excess U.S. deaths compared to the EU27, cumulated over the period of pandemic stood at 96,595, or 108,1787 on the age-adjusted basis. 

In other words, U.S. cumulated deaths now exceed those in EU27 by 20.8 percent on population-size adjusted basis and by 23.3%. 

U.S. excess mortality compared to the EU27 and Europe, once we account for population differences is still rising:

In highly simplified terms, the U.S. pandemic experience has been associated with a cumulative excess mortality, compared to the EU27 and Europe of between 96,595 and 160,584 cases, respectively, based solely on differences in population sizes.

If older European and EU27 demographics are factored in, these excess U.S. deaths rise to 108,200 and 134,800, respectively.

I recently covered some new research on the policy-level failures in the U.S. during the COVID19 pandemic (see https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/3221-cost-of-trumps-failures-to-act-on.html). In simplified terms, the numbers above are shocking: were the U.S. to match policy responses in the EU27, we could have expected a death toll 96,600-108,200 lower than we currently observe. 

The U.S., however, managed much better than the EU27 in terms of deaths per case or the morbidity rate of the disease:

Overall new cases have become progressively less fatal through week 34 of 2020. This is most likely accounted for by improved and earlier diagnostics and treatments, as well as by increased share of infections detected in younger patients. These effects were exhausted around week 35 of 2020.

The 2nd wave of the pandemic in the EU27 was associated with a significant initial increase in severity. A smaller increase took place in the U.S. in the 3rd wave. Overall, the most recent wave of the pandemic saw relative uplift in the EU27 mortality rate, while the U.S. mortality rate continued to decline.

U.S. trend remains power-law, implying sustained decreases in mortality of new cases over time, while the EU27 trend has shifted toward a polynomial since Week 53 of 2020, implying rising risk of sustained increases in mortality.

In terms of the rate of change in weekly deaths: 

4-weeks average W/W rate of change in new cases, through Week 5 of 2021 was -20.7% in the  U.S. against -8.6% in the EU27.  4-weeks average W/W rate of change in deaths, through Week 5 of 2021 was -3.0% in the  U.S. against -1.9% in the EU27. 

A summary of the U.S.-EU27 comparatives:

14/2/21: COVID19 Update: BRIICS

 In previous posts, I covered the latest data for weekly Covid19 pandemic dynamics for:

• Global data and trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html;
• European & EU27 data and trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html; and
• Data and trends for the most impacted countries and regions: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-most-impacted.html.

Now, let's take a closer look at the pandemic dynamics in the BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa).

In broadly defined terms, there is an ongoing decline in both new cases and new deaths over the last week across all BRIICS. That said, it is too early to call the peaking of the second wave of this pandemic in terms of deaths counts, since weekly counts remain extremely high and show only one week of sustained declines. The good news is that last week's declines were evident in all BRIICS. Another good news is that we now have at least four consecutive weeks of declines in new cases across the entire group, except for Indonesia, where we only have one week of declines, and China. 

A summary table:

14/2/21: COVID19 Update: Most impacted countries

 

Previous posts on the COVID19 update covered global numbers and trends (https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html) and European & EU27 trends (https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-europe-and-eu27.html).

Here are some comparatives across all countries with the highest rates of detected infections (> 5% of population):

Note: I highlighted countries with > 10 million population.

Another way of looking at this is to take countries with more than 250,000 confirmed cases, as presented in the next set of tables:

Comparing regions to the above countries:

And looking at the countries by population relatives:

The table above really drives home the depth of the crisis in Europe and the U.S. U.S. accounts so far fo 20 percent of global deaths, having just 4.3 percent of the global population. This gives the U.S. second worst ratio of its share of global deaths to its share of world population. Only the UK exceeds the U.S. in this horrific metric. The EU27 fall in the third place, below the U.S. with 21.4% of the world's deaths and 5.8% of the global population. 

14/2/21: COVID19 Update: Europe and EU27

 Summary table from the previous post covering worldwide trends (https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/02/14221-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html) puts Europe and EU 27 in the context of global trends:

The chart next shows weekly data dynamics for new cases for EU27 and Europe:

Both Europe and EU27 have experienced two waves of the pandemic, with the second wave characterized by two key features:

1. Long and slow decline in the new cases counts, lasting from the peak of the wave around Week 45 of 2020; and 
2. Re-acceleration in the wave into another local peak at Week 1 of 2021. 

The quick reversals of decline trend around Weeks 51-53 of 2020 is a worrying sign that improvements in overall pandemic trends are fragile.

The fragility of the trend in terms of improvements are even more evident in the numbers of new weekly deaths. Both Europe and EU27 are yet to confirm the peaking of the second wave of the pandemic in terms of weekly new deaths. Nominally, the peaks of the most recent wave in Week 49 of 2020 in the EU27 and Week 3 of 2021 in Europe have not, yet, been followed by accelerating or deepening declines in the deaths counts.

One clear positive trend remains in terms of mortality rates per case:

The caveat to the above is a slight uplift in mortality around Week 51 of 2020 as shown in the above.

Cumulated deaths per capita are exhibiting a slight slowdown over time (slope) but are still increasing at a rate massively in excess of what was witnessed during the period of Week 19-43 of 2020. In other words, we are not yet out of the woods, even compared to the pandemic dynamics of the Summer 2020.

As with global figures, it is too early to say anything about vaccinations effects on general trends.

14/2/21: COVID19 Update: Worldwide Data

 Worldwide trends for COVID19 pandemic in terms of cases and deaths:

There is some ambiguity in timing the waves of the pandemic. This ambiguity is driven by the dynamics of the new cases and, to a lesser extent, deaths. Globally, we have exited Wave 3 that started around Week 34 of 2020 and peaked in Week 1 of 2021. Promising dynamics aside, latest level of new infections remains at the levels well above Waves 1 and 2 peaks.

Weekly death counts have also peaked in Week 3 of 2021, marking the end of Wave 3. However, the latest death counts are the fifth highest on record and remain severely elevated compared to deaths recorded at the peak of Waves 1 and 2.

Recent decreases in mortality rate are most likely attributable to three key drivers: (1) earlier detection of cases due to improved testing; (2) younger demographics of those with confirmed infections; and (3) improved treatments in the earlier stages of the disease. The decrease in mortality appears to have stabilized and is slightly reversing in the first 5 weeks of 2021. This is the most worrying aspect of the three trends discussed above.

Here is a summary table, with green cells showing improvements and red cells showing deterioration in dynamics:

Last week's deaths have shown an improvement on 4 weeks average in all regions world-wide, and this has been consistent across all (excluding Asia) regions also in terms of new cases 4 weeks average compared to prior 4 weeks average. Deaths, however, are still up on the 4weeks average relative to prior 4 weeks average basis in most regions, with exception of two.

For now, it is hard to attribute the above improvements to vaccinations (long term solutions) and the improved dynamics are probably more consistent with a natural flow of the pandemic wave, reflecting tightening of restrictions on social activities in virtually all major geographies following the holidays season. This, along with the rapidly growing prevalence of the new, more infective, strands of the virus suggests that the gains made in recent weeks are at a risk of reversals.