We’re living in a strange and bizarre world where countries are ignoring their growing Covid case numbers and claiming to have won the Covid battle. The UK continues to record ever-higher number of new Covid cases, but is refusing to budge from a re-opening timetable set months ago when Covid numbers were dropping, vaccination numbers were rising, and it seemed possible that Covid was indeed being vanquished.
But then the Delta variant became an issue, vaccination rates stopped, and Covid numbers started implacably rising again, as can be seen – indeed, it is impossible not to see. The British response to this? Pretend it isn’t happening.
So, for perhaps the first and probably only time during the entire pandemic, I find myself agreeing with WHO when it warns of the “epidemiological stupidity” of early re-openings.
The week has also seen another global “milestone” passed – there have now been over 4 million deaths in total, and as of late Thursday, we’re looking at 186 million cases and 4.03 million deaths worldwide, of which 34.7 million cases and 622,210 deaths come from the US.
As you can see, new Covid cases are rising once more globally. This battle is far from finished.
I’ve written about quercetin before as another type of cure for Covid. There have not been many studies done, but the few that have been published are encouraging, and as a freely available “dietary supplement” it seemed like a great extra thing to have available.
Here now is a somewhat peer reviewed article claiming astonishing results from quercetin. The trial is sadly small in size (152 people), but the difference between the study control group and the quercetin group is so strong as to make the results significant anyway.
I do see that five of the 19 authors have involvements with promoting quercetin in some form or another, so the study may have been biased, but short of lying about the outcomes, any such bias isn’t immediately clear to me, the way that sometimes bias is obvious in other testing scenarios.
The key difference between this study and other studies is that it is using a form of quercetin that is more readily absorbed into one’s system than plain/regular quercetin.
I’m trying to track down a fair-priced source of this high-bio-availability quercetin. I’ll let you know.
Current Numbers
Just one swap of places in the minor country list. No changes at all in the major country list, but there are four countries all very close together that might start trading places next week. Italy dropped two places in the death rate list.
The last week activity table saw the country at the bottom last week, in twelfth place; soar to top place this week. The UK moved up two more places, recording a more moderate 36% increase in new cases over the last week compared to the week before. The US showed a rising 15% increase in cases compared to the week before, with a still very moderate 336 new cases per million people over the week.
Rising cases are being reported in still more European countries, including now Germany (10%), Austria (18%), Iceland, Italy and Ireland (all 24%), the Czech Rep (35%), Portugal (43%), Belgium (47%), France (55%), Switzerland (86%), Spain (115%) and Greece (200%). But wait, there’s one more country to report on, too. The Netherlands, with a stunning 279% rise in cases in a single week.
Canada also had a gentle rise in cases, up 6% on the week before, and Mexico a 24% rise. The world as a whole saw a 10% increase, with 2.91 million new cases reported over the week.
Top Case Rates Minor Countries (cases per million)
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Andorra (179,847) | Andorra (181,546) |
| 2 | Montenegro (159,632) | Seychelles (168,533) |
| 3 | Seychelles (157,435) | Montenegro (159,857) |
| 4 | Bahrain | Bahrain |
| 5 | San Marino | San Marino |
| 6 | Maldives | Maldives |
| 7 | Gibraltar (129,183) | Gibraltar (130,400) |
| 8 | Slovenia | Slovenia |
| 9 | Luxembourg | Luxembourg |
| 10 | Uruguay (106,319) | Uruguay (107,659 |
Top Case Rates Major Countries (cases per million)
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Czech Republic (155,416) | Czech Republic (155,521) |
| 2 | Sweden (107,316) | Sweden (107,476) |
| 3 | USA (103,807) | USA (104,142) |
| 4 | Argentina | Argentina |
| 5 | Netherlands | Netherlands |
| 6 | Belgium | Belgium |
| 7 | France | France (88,644) |
| 8 | Brazil (86,993) | Brazil (88,572) |
| 9 | Portugal | Portugal (88,457) |
| 10 | Colombia (83,022) | Colombia (86,521) |
| 11 | Spain | Spain |
| 12 | Chile (80,839) | Chile (81,916) |
Top Death Rate Major Countries (deaths per million)
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Peru (5,764) | Peru (5,794) |
| 2 | Czech Rep (2,825) | Czech Rep (2,827) |
| 3 | Brazil | Brazil |
| 4 | Belgium | Belgium |
| 5 | Italy | Colombia (2,161) |
| 6 | Colombia (2,083) | Argentina (2,146) |
| 7 | Argentina | Italy |
| 8 | Poland | Poland |
| 9 | UK (1,878) | UK (1,880) |
| 10 | USA (1,864) | USA (1,869) |
Top Rates in New Cases Reported in the Last Week (new cases per million) for Countries over one million population
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Namibia 4,827 | Cyprus 4,315 |
| 2 | Mongolia 4,604 | Mongolia 4,202 |
| 3 | Colombia | Tunisia |
| 4 | Argentina | Namibia |
| 5 | Kuwait | Colombia |
| 6 | Oman | Kuwait |
| 7 | Tunisia | UK 2,861 |
| 8 | Uruguay | Argentina |
| 9 | UK 2,113 | South Africa |
| 10 | Costa Rica | Cuba |
| 11 | South Africa | Oman |
| 12 | Cyprus 1,775 | Spain 2,010 |
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Items below include a look at the new Lambda variant and its implications, a disappointing IVM study, did bribes to get people vaccinated work, vax rates around the world, Singapore’s new approach to managing its Covid outbreak, should we even bother looking for “patient zero”, California’s rapidly rising new case counts, why Britain is basically giving up on the virus, Canada almost gets close to opening its border with the US, and the danger of being in a beauty pageant.
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Please stay happy and healthy; all going well, I’ll be back again on Sunday.
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