Author Archives: colinmathers

Covid XBB.1.5 (the Kraken Wakes*)

Posted on February 16, 2023 by colinmathers

A new and highly transmissible subvariant of the Omicron Covid18 variant, XBB.1.5, also nicknamed the Kraken, was first identified in the USA in late October 2022. At the beginning of December, Omicron sub variant XBB.1.5 made up just 1.3 per … Continue reading →

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Is the Covid-19 bivalent booster worthwhile?

Posted on February 3, 2023 by colinmathers

Omicron and subvariants have become the dominant form of Covid-19 circulating in most parts of the world. So-called bivalent mRNA vaccines became available from both Pfizer and Moderna in August or September 2022. Intended for booster vaccination, they contain mRNA … Continue reading →

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Widening life expectancy gap between Republican and Democrat states of the USA

Posted on December 31, 2022 by colinmathers

In my previous post, I highlighted the 3-year drop in US life expectancy from 2019 to 2021. It contrasts with European and other high-income countries where the availability of vaccines and continued implementation of other public health measures resulted in … Continue reading →

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Huge drop in US life expectancy in 2020 and 2021

Posted on December 6, 2022 by colinmathers

US life expectancy dropped nearly 3 years during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. The CDC has recently released US life expectancy estimates for 2021, finding a significant drop for the second year in a row. That decline … Continue reading →

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Abortion restrictions and maternal mortality

Posted on May 20, 2022 by colinmathers

In my previous post, I estimated that 47% of pregnancies are unintended, and of these, 43% occur in countries where abortion is illegal or severely restricted. Globally, 60% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.  In countries where abortion is widely available, … Continue reading →

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Global estimates of abortion rates by legality and region

Posted on May 16, 2022 by colinmathers

A little under two months ago, the Guttmacher Institute and WHO released first-ever country-level estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion (see here). The new study analyzed data for 150 countries for the period 2015-2019 and found that: Almost half of … Continue reading →

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Projections of global deaths from 2016 to 2060

Posted on May 10, 2022 by colinmathers

Sixteen years ago, I published a paper in PLoS Medicine with detailed projections of deaths by age, sex and cause for all regions of the world, from year 2002 to 2030.  That paper has proved very popular, with over 14,100 … Continue reading →

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Australia now has one of the highest Covid new case rates in the world

Posted on December 31, 2021 by colinmathers

In the last two weeks, Australia has gone from having one of the lowest rates of new Covid cases per million population in the world to one of the highest. Most of these new cases are in NSW and according … Continue reading →

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Update on Swiss Covid-19 situation

Posted on December 18, 2021 by colinmathers

Switzerland now has the third highest daily new confirmed cases per million (averaged over last 7 days) at 1,045 per million. This is exceeded only by Denmark (1,417) and Slovakia (1,130).  The UK is not far behind Switzerland at 990. … Continue reading →

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Values and religion in 2020: an updated map

Posted on December 15, 2021 by colinmathers

In my previous post, I presented results for an updated version of the latent variable analyses I carried out last year on data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study [1-4]. I have re-estimated a latent variable for … Continue reading →

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