Covid-19 Diary : Sunday 22 November, 2020

To start off on a happy note, I’d like to thank the many people who responded to my “special” request to become a Travel Insider Supporter in last Sunday’s Covid-19 diary entry.  I was very appreciative at the high level of response – almost as many people responded to that as responded to my requests to the 15-times larger weekly mailing list on either the Friday before or after.

As so many of you obviously know and understand, for 20 years, I have been relying on your help to operate The Travel Insider full-time, and to keep your email boxes full every week with interesting content and lots of additional links and reading opportunities.

Whether it is special virus coverage at present, or regular travel and technology coverage always, this is a full time activity for me.  Sadly, these days the website advertising doesn’t bring in much more than perhaps $150/month, and I need your support to be able to continue doing this – not just to pay me a modest wage, but to cover the cost of webhosting, computer equipment (both my main server and personal computer are now over five years old and getting close to needing replacement), purchases of items to review, and sundry other business costs.  Hence the annual fundraising drive.

If you missed the mention last Sunday, can I ask you to please now choose to become a Travel Insider Supporter.  It is easy to do, and you can choose to support at any level you are comfortable with, either a single time, or a “good until canceled” series of quarterly or annual sums.

Clearly you appreciate these “diary entries” and so I’m going to reward all the kind people and encourage the others who have not yet responded.  I’m going to make part of each Diary Entry for Supporters.  I’ll leave the opening comments and the statistics for all to see, and the further detailed content will be for Supporters.

I hope is a fair balance of generous content for all and valuable extra content for Supporters.  If you’re not yet a Supporter, you can of course join right now and get instant access.

I admit it.  I was wrong.  A week ago, I’d predicted the US daily new case count would reach 200,000 by Thursday.  It didn’t – and that’s the sort of error I’m happy to see.  But on Friday, it did, getting to 204,179 in a single day.  Ugh.

Will our new case numbers continue to increase?  How long will it take us to reach a quarter million cases a day?  I’m not sure.  Possibly there might be a faltering in growth at present, and after Friday’s new record, Saturday was “only” 137,000 new cases.  Perhaps some of the new restrictions being imposed are starting to work.  But on the other hand, I agree with the experts who fear that Thanksgiving travel and family celebrations might create an uptick in new cases.  Let’s see how the country acts for Thanksgiving and maybe then it will be clearer if we’ll go on to a quarter million cases every day or not.

The UK is planning a bit further ahead than the US.  It is trying to come up with a lockdown policy for the Christmas period, and at present, the thinking is there will probably be a five day suspension of restrictions to allow families to get together over the Christmas period.

One could wryly note that the UK government’s Christmas gift to its people is the gift of the virus – a bonus chance to become infected.  While it is kind to allow families to come together and unite, the virus is relentless in its spread. The UK has calculated (I don’t understand how) that it will require five days of stricter lockdown restrictions for each day of the Christmas “amnesty”, so 25 days of greater lockdown in return for five days of relative freedom.

What the UK government is not saying, however, is how many extra cases and deaths will result from this five day suspension.  That’s essential information to share, to allow people to make truly informed decisions about what to do at Christmastime.

Current Numbers

I have realized that because there are such large gaps in counts between each of the states, these lists of US states will probably be very slow changing rather than volatile.  It would be great to get a list of current new infections and deaths rather than totals since the start, but I’m not sure of a source for that – if anyone knows of one, please let me know.

What can be seen at present though is that Vermont’s new cases between Thursday and Sunday rose by 811/million, whereas North Dakota’s rose by 5,342 – more than six times the rate of new infections.  Vermont’s deaths rose by 3/million, whereas New Jersey’s rose by 9.

The two new case tables and the death table too show European countries continuing their advance up the lists.  Italy, nowhere on the death list last Sunday, is now in fourth place.  And, as predicted, the US edged ahead of Chile to return to its customary 8th place.

US Best and Worst States

Top Case Rates Minor Countries

Top Case Rates Major Countries

Top Death Rate Major Countries

The rest of this newsletter is for the very kind Travel Insider Supporters – it is their support that makes all of this possible, and it seems fair they get additional material in return.  If you’re not yet a Supporter, please consider becoming one, and get instant access to the rest of the Diary Entry, to our 400+ page book on the virus, and much extra content on other parts of the website too.

If you’re a contributor, you should make sure you’re logged in, and when you are, you’ll see the purple text and balance of the newsletter below.  If you’re not logged in, or reading this via email, you need to log in on the website first.

SUPPORTER ONLY CONTENT

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END OF SUPPORTER ONLY CONTENT

Please stay happy and healthy; all going well, I’ll be back again on Thursday.

Please click here for a listing of all our Covid-19 articles.