Blog Day 151 - Thursday 03 December 2020

 First up the good news.  I have previously mentioned that this year, due to virus restrictions, the Shrine volunteer christmas lunch was going to be held as a picnic in the grounds of the Shrine reserve.  Yesterday I received a email from the Shrine telling me that the lunch is now to be held at the Melbourne town hall where it is traditionally held.

There are some stringent rules with allocated seating and arrival times and limits on  mixing, but still a great effort by the Shrine staff to get us back to the town hall.  The town hall is also quite close to our traditional post lunch watering hole at Young and Jacksons where we usually retire to for a couple of cold frosty ones and the retelling of old war stories.

It seems as though the Australian Open is going ahead under very strict quarantine conditions.  Players and one coach will be able to leave their hotel room for 5 hours a day for practice, gym exercise and massages etc all under tightly controlled conditions.  I don't think that I would be very happy doing my 14 day quarantine after returning to Australia under strict conditions that mean I can't leave my room for 14 days but I can see out of my window the tennis players hopping into their limousines to go of for tennis practice.

Victoria has recorded it's 34th zero - zero - zero day and barring anything dramatic happening there should be further loosening of the virus restrictions from this Sunday, including being able to have up to 30 people visiting a household.

Australia wide there were 16 new cases in the last 24 hours all from returned overseas travellers.  NSW with 9, Qld with 1 and NT with 6.  These results were from over 10,000 test in Victoria, 13,300 in NSW, 3,800 in Qld and 4,500 in SA.

Currently Victoria has zero active cases, NSW 4, Qld 8, WA 19 and SA 9.  Nationally there are 55 active cases 42 of which are returned overseas travellers.

Keep these figures in mind when we have a look at the daily and weekly update of the worldwide figures.

In the last 24 hours there were 647,000 new infections reported worldwide and 12,626 deaths reported, these figures are amongst the highest 24 hourly figures reported for the pandemic.

In the last week there were 4,115,000 new infections reported worldwide for a total of 64,816,000 reported infections worldwide for the pandemic.  In the same week there were 72,500 deaths reported to bring the total number of deaths worldwide to 1,499,000 for the pandemic.  The number of new infections is slightly lower than the 4,157,000 reported for the previous week.  The number of deaths reported for the week is slightly higher than the previous week.

Of the USA, Brazil, Mexico and India; Brazil and Mexico reported higher new infections and deaths for the week than the previous week and USA and India reported lower new infections and deaths than the previous weeks.  Current week figures are as follows with previous week figures in brackets; USA infections for the week 1,173,000 (1,267,000), deaths for the week 11,600 (12,000); Brazil infections 270,000 (219,000), deaths 3,700 (3,300); Mexico infections 62,000 (49,000), deaths 4,000 (3,700); India infections 267,000 (309,000), deaths 3,400 (3,600).

These four countries with 1,772,000 new infections for the week are reporting 43% of the worldwide new infections, down from 44% the previous week.  They are reporting 31% of the the deaths for the week down from 32% the previous week.

The UK, Spain, Italy and France all reported lower new weekly infections and apart from Italy reported lower weekly death figures.  It appears that the new lockdowns in these countries are starting to have some effect.

The UK reported 102,000 new infections for the week, down from 127,000 the previous week and 3,200 new deaths, down from 3,300 the previous week.  Spain reported 60,000 new infections a decrease from 80,200 the previous week and 1,700 new deaths, down from 2,000 deaths the previous week.  Italy reported 161,000 new infections for the week down from 209,000 the previous week and 5,000 new deaths a slight increase on 4,800 the previous week. France reported 75,000 new infections for the week down from 105,000 the previous week and 3,200 new deaths down from 3,900 deaths the previous week.

These four countries represent 10% of worldwide new infections down from 13% last week and 18% of new deaths, down from 19% last week.

These are promising and significant reductions for these four European countries, lets hope that it isn't a reporting or statistical glitch and that the pattern continues.

There has been a bit of movement in the top 10 countries by deaths per million of population and I have listed them below (excluding the micro countries and including Australia and New Zealand for comparison purposes);

1. Belgium 1,446 deaths per million of population
2. Peru       1,086
3. Spain        979
4. Italy          944
5. UK           877
6. Argentina 863
7. USA         843
8. France      824
9. Mexico     824
10. Brazil       819

          Australia  35

          NZ            05

The only thing keeping India out of this list is it's massive population.

In looking through the list of countries I identified a little cluster of countries with high death rates per million that I hadn't noticed before, they are listed below;

        North Macedonia          876 deaths per million

        Bosnia Herzegovina      847

        Montenegro                   812

        Slovenia                        744

        Bulgaria                        628

These of course are some of the Balkan countries, they seem to get the rough end of the pineapple whenever there is anything bad going on (much of it bought upon themselves of course).  I don't think that I will be visiting Sarajevo again anytime in the foreseeable future.

Tables as below;

Corona Virus Daily Stats – Towards Covid Normal – 2^nd 14 day stage – Day 11

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Aus Death	Vic Death	Aus Hospl	Vic Hospital	Aus ICU	Vic ICU
22/11	27,819	12	20,345	0	907	819	22	1	0	0
23/11	27,828	8	20,345	0	907	819	22	1	0	0
24/11	27,843	8	20,345	0	907	819	21	0	0	0
25/11	27,853	4	20,345	0	907	819	22	0	0	0
26/11	27,857	1	20,345	0	907	819	27	0	0	0
27/11	27,872	5	20,345	0	907	819	23	0	0	0
28/11	27,885	13	20,345	0	907	819	22	0	0	0
29/11	27,892	7	20,345	0	907	819	22	0	0	0
30/11	27,902	9	20,345	0	908	820	21	0	0	0
01/12	27,912	8	20,345	0	908	820	19	0	0	0
02/12	27,921	9	20,345	0	908	820	21	0	0	0
03/12	27,939	16	20,345	0	908	820	27	0	0	0

Country	Population	Infected No	Infected Increase	Deaths No	Deaths Increase No	Deaths per Million Population
Belgium	11,500,000	579,212	17,409	16,786	848	1460
UK	68,000,000	1,659,256	102,249	59,699	3,166	878
Spain	47,000,000	1,682,533	59,901	45,784	1,747	974
Italy	60,000,000	1,641,610	160,736	57,045	5,017	951
Sweden	10,000,000	266,158	35,644	6,972	417	697
France	65,000,000	2,244,635	74,538	53,816	3,198	828
USA	331,000,000	14,309,296	1,173,024	279,845	11,632	845
Brazil	213,000,000	6,436,650	269,752	174,531	3,732	819
Mexico	129,000,000	1,122,362	62,210	106,765	4,026	828
South Africa	59,000,000	796,472	20,970	21,709	508	368
Russia	146,000,000	2,347,401	184,898	41,053	3,515	281
World	7,800,000,000	64,816,436	4,115,442	1,498,298	72,455	192
India	1,300,000,000	9,533,471	266,774	138,657	3,396	107
Australia	25,000,000	27,923	69	908	1	36
New Zealand	5,000,000	2,060	21	25	0	5

Corona Virus International Stats as at 03/12/2020

Remember: Wear your mask when you are buying your Bunnings sausage; no holidays in Britain for a while yet; be careful planning your computer upgrades (my most recent upgrade cost me $1,400); somebody is probably checking your poo; if in doubt get tested (it doesn't hurt, honestly); get the catgut strings in your tennis racket checked.