Tag Archives: pandemic

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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Covid-19 booster shots and the Delta variant

Posted on November 21, 2021 by colinmathers

Switzerland is now offering a Covid-19 booster shot to to the 65+ and at-risk who has had their two Covid-19 vaccinations at least six months ago. It may soon be extended to all adults. I had my third shot last … Continue reading →

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A fourth Covid-19 wave hits Europe and Switzerland has a second referendum to end vaccine certificate requirements

Posted on November 14, 2021 by colinmathers

Covid-19 cases rose by 7% and deaths by 10% over the last week in Europe, as it enters a fourth (or fifth) wave and currently accounts for about two-thirds of infections reported globally. Belgium and the Netherlands, which have fully … Continue reading →

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Excess mortality in the USA and its causes 2000 – 2020

Posted on May 14, 2021 by colinmathers

Sam Preston and Yana Vierboom published a short paper in April which showed that Americans die at higher rates than Europeans and this translated into roughly 400,000 additional deaths in 2017 that would not have occurred if the USA had … Continue reading →

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New estimates of total global COVID-19 deaths from IHME

Posted on May 10, 2021 by colinmathers

A few days ago, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) released estimates of total COVID-19 deaths for countries based on comparisons of total deaths from all causes during the pandemic period with the expected total deaths based on … Continue reading →

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A Covid Performance Index for countries

Posted on January 29, 2021 by colinmathers

An Australian think-tank, the Lowy Institute has produced a Covid Performance Index and used it to examine the impact of geography, political systems, economic development and population size on the Covid-19 outcomes around the world. The COVID Performance Index compiled … Continue reading →

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The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic

Posted on August 28, 2020 by colinmathers

Today, I took another look at the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic using data on confirmed cases downloaded from the Johns Hopkins University CCSE data repository. This post focuses mostly on western European countries, with a few others like … Continue reading →

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Covid-19: which countries are succeeding and not succeeding?

Posted on July 7, 2020 by colinmathers

There is now sufficient data on social distancing, lockdown, and other measures that researchers are starting to assess the effectiveness of these measures. The July 4th edition of The Economist has an article summarizing what is becoming clear.  Extensive testing … Continue reading →

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An out-of-control pandemic in most world regions

Posted on July 6, 2020 by colinmathers

I downloaded the Covid-19 data up to 5 July from the JHU Github today and plotted smoothed new cases per day (average over last 7 days) as rates per million population by world region. The dramatic difference in trajectories for … Continue reading →

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