COVID-19 Compilation: Part 50 - March 7-14, 2021
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| March 14, 2020. |
On March 14th, 2020, I began posting COVID-19 updates to my facebook page, regarding the status of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have used data from worldometer as a primary source for daily and cumulative data, with frequent supplementation from various national and local sites.
Notables this week:
- Cases outside the United States rose sharply
- Italy announced new lockdowns to begin March 15th
- Cases in the United States continued to fall
- Deaths in the United States fell by nearly 28%
This blog post compiles the period of March 7th through March 14, 2021. see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ for more
MARCH 7
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 117.45 million | 378,475 | 2.605 million | 5,893 |
| USA | 29.70 million | 44,878 | 537,841 | 715 |
- The world death total today was the least since November 2nd.
- The US death total today was the least since November 8th.
- The US case total today was the least since October 11th.
MARCH 8
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 117.76 million | 296,642 | 2.612 million | 6,593 |
| USA | 29.75 million | 45,358 | 538,869 | 829 |
Here's a new chart, at least for me. The trend chart for vaccinations in the United States, as reported to the CDC.
The numbers are rising sharply in the USA; the United States has the highest vaccination rate among the 20 most heavily populated countries in the world. Among people age 65 and older in the USA, 59.3% have now received at least one vaccine dose, and 29.7% are fully vaccinated (the CDC has changed its verbiage, now that a single dose vaccine is available).
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| Vaccines Administered in the USA and Reported to the CDC |
MARCH 9
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 118.15 million | 395,074 | 2.621 million | 9,066 |
| USA | 29.80 million | 55,946 | 540,580 | 1,711 |
Overall, the USA has accounted for more than 25% of the reported COVID-19 cases worldwide. For the week ending January 9th, the USA accounted for 34.3% of the world's new cases.
Today, the USA accounted for 14.2% of the world's new cases.
Israel has now surpassed 100 vaccine doses administered per 100 people. The United States is 5th worldwide, at 27 doses administered per 100 people.
For more information on the trends in vaccines, see https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccination-doses-per-capita?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=earliest..2021-03-07®ion=World
MARCH 10
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 118.62 million | 470,919 | 2.631 million | 9,999 |
| USA | 29.86 million | 61,360 | 542,191 | 1,611 |
On March 10, 2020, I was a precinct co-chair for the Michigan primary election. Due to events in prior primary states, the election was largely ceremonial, and turnout was expected to be light. Eight days before the election, a message was sent out to all election workers, beginning: "In light of recent news stories, a few Election Workers have expressed concern about precautionary resources in the precincts. We have already ordered hand sanitizer for precinct use. If you choose, you may bring your own protective gloves and/or a mask for personal use. Just remember to wash your hands frequently during the day, sneeze into your arm or shoulder, and take other common sense precautions."
During the election, which for our precinct was in a cramped supplemental building behind an elementary school, one of my workers brought a mask (quickly discarded) and wore gloves. Although no cases had been reported in Michigan yet, everyone figured that would change imminently.
School was in session, and election workers had to get hall passes to get to the teachers lounge in order to have running water to wash hands. The single small container of hand sanitizer provided by the township was barely touched during the day.
After the voting was over and we closed up the polling place, all chairs and co-chairs had to assemble at Town Hall to go through the audit process, in which the various records are matched up to ensure that all reporting was accurate. The absentee vote workers were still there as well, running the last of ballots through the machines. The township put out its typical buffet of cold pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, soft drinks and other snacks for the workers to enjoy while socializing and waiting for their turn at the audit.
While we were waiting, the news broke that the first 2 Michigan cases of COVID-19 had been reported, including one in Oakland County. I looked around the room. Precinct chairs and co-chairs are often older, many are retirees. We didn't know much about the virus yet, but the age profile was already reasonably understood by then. I wondered how many among us might have been exposed that day; a year later, I still don't know how many -- if any -- of the people there that day contracted the virus.
One thing I understood more certainly: our lives were all about to change.
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| setting up for the Michigan primary, March 9, 2020. |
MARCH 11
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 119.11 million | 483,576 | 2.642 million | 9,823 |
| USA | 29.93 million | 62,913 | 544,039 | 1,605 |
One year ago today, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.
Today, the USA surpassed 10% of the total population being fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
In Brazil, more than 6,500 people have died from COVID-19 over the past 3 days.
MARCH 12
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 119.60 million | 490,217 | 2.651 million | 9,477 |
| USA | 29.99 million | 68,216 | 545,568 | 1,529 |
One year ago today, Ezra came home from college. In the space of 48 hours, we went from no cases in Michigan, to a pandemic being declared, to cancellation of the NBA season, to "time to come home."
I joined Ezra for one last dinner at South Quad. We packed what we could in to the car, and that was it. We saw one student go out on a stretcher, presumably (though never confirmed) and early sufferer from the virus.
Masks and social distancing weren't really things, yet.
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| At the South Quad dining hall, March 12, 2020 |
MARCH 13
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 120.05 million | 449,663 | 2.659 million | 8,209 |
| USA | 30.05 million | 51,899 | 546,597 | 1,038 |
| This week's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Cases This Week | Percent Change | Deaths This Week | Percent Change |
| World | 2.97 million | +7.4% | 59,314 | -4.2% |
| USA | 0.39 million | -9.3% | 9,134 | -27.9% |
Per worldometer numbers, today we passed 120 million COVID-19 cases overall worldwide, and 30 million cases in the United States. So, the United States, with just about 4% of the world's population, has accounted for 25% of the reported cases.
This week, however, the USA accounted for just 13.17% of all new cases. That's the 9th consecutive week the USA share of new cases has gone down; 13.17% marks the lowest percentage since the US Labor Day holiday helped cause the week ending September 12th, 2020 to finish at 13.05%; otherwise, it's been 51 weeks since the USA had a smaller share of the world's new cases.
But in the world overall, cases went up, significantly. Excluding the United States, cases were up worldwide by 10.5% this week, and deaths were up worldwide by 1.0%. So while it's true that the situation has been improving dramatically in the USA, the worldwide pandemic is far from over.
Some examples:
- Brazil had 499,930 new cases this week (up 18.4%) and 12,770 deaths (up 25.4%); both numbers exceeded the US numbers. On a per capita basis, the Brazilian number was twice that of the United States.
- Italy had 155,117 new cases this week (up 11.7%) and 2303 new deaths (up 11.2%). On a per capita bases, both numbers far exceed the USA totals; the per capita case number was more than twice that of the USA.
This was the third consecutive week of rising cases in Italy, and cases have gone up by 82.5% during that period. The UK variant B.1.1.7 of the virus is largely believed to be responsible for the rapid spread of this latest wave. Today, the Italian government announced a new lockdown period, to commence on Monday in 10 of its 20 regions. For more on the situation in Italy, see https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/13/europe/italy-coronavirus-national-lockdown-intl/index.html
The graph below shows the US weekly share of world COVID-19 cases and deaths.
The graph below shows the US weekly share of world COVID-19 cases and deaths.
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| US share of World COVID-19 cases and deaths, by week |
MARCH 14
| Today's counts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Total Cases | Cases Today | Total Deaths | Deaths Today |
| World | 120.44 million | 376,723 | 2.665 million | 6,048 |
| USA | 30.09 million | 43,584 | 547,288 | 661 |
Wiping up...
One year ago today, I went shopping at CostCo. I figured that, with a Michigan shutdown of restaurants due to begin in two days, with more shutdowns nearly certain to follow, I might not be getting out again for a while. I had already witnessed people hoarding Lysol on my most recent visit to another store, and there were stories of runs on -- of all things -- toilet paper. The CostCo had toilet paper, with a big sign noting a limit of one per customer. I took a CostCo size package of the Kirkland brand.
That evening, I went out searching for data that would help me understand what was happening in the USA and worldwide with respect to the spread of COVID-19. Much to my surprise, there were few reliable data sources; for sure the United States Center for Disease Control was deficient. Finally I found a site called worldometer, and that evening wrote a short facebook note: "to anyone confused about why social distancing really is necessary: please look at these graphs," with a link to the worldometers COVID-19 site. The next evening, I started posting daily updates with the basic data: 684 deaths worldwide, which at the time was a rise of 12% in the worldwide grand total. 12,781 new cases worldwide, a record at the time, including 737 in the United States, also a record. Altogether, as of March 15th there were 3,782 reported cases in the United States, and 69 deaths.
Since then, we've seen multiple large waves of COVID-19. The Lombardia region of Italy was overrun, then in April more than 23,000 people died just in New York. By the end of April more Americans had died from COVID-19 than had died in the Vietnam War.
That evening, I went out searching for data that would help me understand what was happening in the USA and worldwide with respect to the spread of COVID-19. Much to my surprise, there were few reliable data sources; for sure the United States Center for Disease Control was deficient. Finally I found a site called worldometer, and that evening wrote a short facebook note: "to anyone confused about why social distancing really is necessary: please look at these graphs," with a link to the worldometers COVID-19 site. The next evening, I started posting daily updates with the basic data: 684 deaths worldwide, which at the time was a rise of 12% in the worldwide grand total. 12,781 new cases worldwide, a record at the time, including 737 in the United States, also a record. Altogether, as of March 15th there were 3,782 reported cases in the United States, and 69 deaths.
Since then, we've seen multiple large waves of COVID-19. The Lombardia region of Italy was overrun, then in April more than 23,000 people died just in New York. By the end of April more Americans had died from COVID-19 than had died in the Vietnam War.
The USA death toll recently surpassed a half million.
We watched as leaders in countries such as Turkey and Mexico declared that they were somehow not susceptible to the virus, then as those same countries had horrible outbreaks, and we watched as the president of Brazil called the virus a "little flu" and as Russia underreported its deaths by at least two thirds and as North Korea pretended they had no cases at all.
In the United States, we saw the virus first seem to hit only "blue states" and then become predominantly a "red states" thing, finally settling on "it's everywhere." For nearly a year, the virus response in the United States seemed decidedly secondary to the politics of the virus response, on everything from protective equipment for health care workers to state government actions to shut down some establishments or to require social distancing and public wearing of masks.
New case numbers finally started to fall in parts of the United States at the end of 2020, and far more sharply over the past two months. With the roll-out of 3 approved vaccines in the United States and the prospect of vaccine availability for all USA adults within the next 7 weeks, there is genuine optimism that things could start to "get back to normal" by summer. Today's number for new cases is the lowest since October 5th 2020. Still, there are new virus variants, and we're now seeing big spikes in case counts in Brazil, Italy, and elsewhere.
So, a year since I started these updates, I am suspending them. Information is plentiful now, even from the CDC. I've learned a lot from doing these, and I hope these updates have been useful to those who have been reading them.
Last note: Recently, I noted to Lori, "we're going through toilet paper awfully quickly." Today, I went to the CostCo. They had plenty of toilet paper, from 3 different makers. I picked up a Costco size package of the Charmin brand.
We watched as leaders in countries such as Turkey and Mexico declared that they were somehow not susceptible to the virus, then as those same countries had horrible outbreaks, and we watched as the president of Brazil called the virus a "little flu" and as Russia underreported its deaths by at least two thirds and as North Korea pretended they had no cases at all.
In the United States, we saw the virus first seem to hit only "blue states" and then become predominantly a "red states" thing, finally settling on "it's everywhere." For nearly a year, the virus response in the United States seemed decidedly secondary to the politics of the virus response, on everything from protective equipment for health care workers to state government actions to shut down some establishments or to require social distancing and public wearing of masks.
New case numbers finally started to fall in parts of the United States at the end of 2020, and far more sharply over the past two months. With the roll-out of 3 approved vaccines in the United States and the prospect of vaccine availability for all USA adults within the next 7 weeks, there is genuine optimism that things could start to "get back to normal" by summer. Today's number for new cases is the lowest since October 5th 2020. Still, there are new virus variants, and we're now seeing big spikes in case counts in Brazil, Italy, and elsewhere.
So, a year since I started these updates, I am suspending them. Information is plentiful now, even from the CDC. I've learned a lot from doing these, and I hope these updates have been useful to those who have been reading them.
Last note: Recently, I noted to Lori, "we're going through toilet paper awfully quickly." Today, I went to the CostCo. They had plenty of toilet paper, from 3 different makers. I picked up a Costco size package of the Charmin brand.
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