Blog Day 315 - Friday 05 February 2021

 Before I get into the serious Covid business here is something amusing that happened in the Victorian parliament yesterday.  The Victorian Attorney General (AG) introduced a bill popularly known as the "Gay Conversion Therapy" bill although that isn't its legal name.  Anybody who has any interest in the legislation will know what it is about so I won't go into that.  Anyway this is an important bit of legislation and is very controversial and is opposed by some members of the medical, legal and religious fraternity.

When the AG stood up to introduce the bill, and remember she is the 3rd highest ranking minister in the state after the premier and treasurer, she started off by saying that she is only new in the job and didn't know much about the legislation that she was introducing.  She did say that usually on the way to work (in her chauffeur driven state supplied car) she usually listens to music, however on this occasion she chose not to listen to music but to read some paperwork about this new legislation.

Although she confessed to not knowing much about the legislation that she was introducing she then went on to say that when she got home that evening she would tell her children how "friggin proud" she was of it, and that's a quote.

And that folk is what you get when ministers are appointed by a combination of factions, quotas and union interference.  

So back to the Covid situation.  Lucky I posted a bit of a blog yesterday cause the curse of the blog was not invoked and Victoria experienced zero local or community infections even though the infectious person from the hotel quarantine had been out and about.  Is it too early to suggest that we may have dodged a bullet here.

In the last 24 hours Victoria reported 3 new infections, all ROTs, NSW zero new infections, either local or ROTs and Qld 1 new infection who was an ROT.  Australia wide there were 4 new infections reported all ROTs.

In the last 24 hours Victoria received the results of 14,200 tests.  I thought that this number would be higher for Victoria given the the infected person's movements around the community and the testing stations were reporting that they were overwhelmed, maybe the results from these tests are still moving through the system.  NSW reported 10,100 test results, Qld 6,800 and WA 13,400 on 4/2.

Currently Victoria has 24 active cases 23 of which are ROTs, NSW has 11 active cases plus 35 ROTs and Qld has 5 active cases all ROTs.  Australia wide there are 53 active cases 40 of which are ROTs plus NSW's 35 ROTs.

Worldwide there were 533,000 cases reported in the last 24 hours bringing the world wide figure of infections for the pandemic to 105 million.  There were 17,000 deaths reported in the last 24 hours bringing to 2.3 million deaths worldwide for the pandemic.

Worldwide there appears pattern developing of a decrease in the daily number of infections,  however this is not translating into a reduction in the number of deaths, although the daily death figures appear to be stabilising.  The weekly increase of worldwide infections was 3.5 million which is the first time that it has been under 4 million since 12/11/2020.  The weekly increase in the number of deaths was 94,000 which is lower than last week's figure of 100,000 is not setting any strong pattern of decline in death numbers.

Both the US and UK are showing reasonably strong declines in the number of new infections for the week but similar to the worldwide figures these are not yet translating into a significant reduction in the death figures although the death figures for these two countries maybe stabilising or reducing slightly.

In the last week the US recorded 994,000 new infections down from 1.1 million the week before. In the same period the US recorded 22,400 deaths compared to 23,100 deaths the week before.

In the last week the UK recorded 157,000 new infections down from 209,000 the week before.  In the same period the UK recorded 7,500 deaths compared to 8,600 the week before.  

The other countries that we have been following have shown mixed results for the week.  Brazil, Mexico and India have all reported declines in the number of infections for the week, albeit relatively minor figures but at least they are not increasing.  These three countries have also reported small declines in the numbers of deaths for the week, once again not big figures but heading in the right direction all the same.

Italy has shown a small decrease in both the numbers of new infections and deaths for the week.  France has reported a small increase in both new infections and deaths for the week.  If not declining France's figures appear to be stabilising, maybe their lockdown and curfew is starting to take some effect.

Spain's new infection figures have declined from 362,000 last week to 139,000 this week.  Given the wide ranging variances in Spain's figures over the last few weeks I have concerns about the reliability of their figures.  Spain's reported death figures for the last week were 3,100 an increase from 2,700 the week before and once again I am not to confident in the reliability of the Spanish figures.

The US, Brazil, Mexico and India accounted for 43% (41%) of the weekly worldwide infections and 40% (41%) of the weekly worldwide deaths.  The UK, Spain, Italy and France accounted for 15% (20%) of the weekly worldwide infections and 18% (17%) of the deaths.  (The previous week's %s in brackets).

Below I have listed the top 22 countries by death per million of population with last week's ranking in brackets.  (As usual I have excluded the micro countries and included Australia and New Zealand for comparison purposes).

1. Belgium 1,826 (1)
2. Slovenia 1,722 (2)
3. UK 1,619 (3)
4. Czechia 1,569 (4)
5. Italy 1,494 (5)
6. Bosnia 1,452 (6)
7. USA 1,406 (8)
8. North Macedonia 1,392 (7)
9. Bulgaria 1,362 (9)
10. Hungary 1,330 (10)
11. Portugal 1,325 (18)
12. Montenegro 1,315 (11)
13. Spain 1,300 (12)
14. Peru 1,256 (13)
15. Croatia 1,248 (14)
16. Mexico 1,243 (15)
17. France 1,193 (16)
18. Sweden 1,187 (17)
19. Switzerland 1,099 (19)
20. Colombia 1,077 (New)
21. Brazil 1,072 (21)
22. Argentina 1,072 (21)

• Australia 35
• New Zealand 05

The top six countries by deaths per million remains unchanged from last week, however this week the USA has jumped North Macedonia into seventh position.  The big mover for the week has been Portugal jumping from 18th position last week, its 1st week in the table, to 11th position this week.  For the 1st time Colombia has made an entry onto the table at number twenty.

Below is the vaccination table showing the top ten countries by vaccination per 100,000 of population.  Israel is well ahead of everybody else with nearly 60,000  per 100,000 of population, or to put it another way they have vaccinated nearly 60% of their population, up from 50% last week.

COUNTRY	VACC	DOSES	per 100k
Israel		5,091,930	59,771
UAE		3,440,777	35,214
Seychelles		30,861	31,491
UK		10,143,511	15,021
Bahrain		174,075	10,608
USA		32,780,860	9,962
Malta		29,002	6,591
Monaco		2,400	6,154
Serbia		495,964	5,654
Denmark		282,894	4,901
Worldwide		103,809,049	1,346

Interesting to see that not only is Serbia using the ever reliable Sputnik V they are also subjecting their good citizens to Sinopharm.  Why aren't we using these ones, they would be good enough for public servants, real estate salespeople, used car salespeople, debt collectors and bankers. (Note the use of woke non gender specific occupations).

Tables as below;

Corona Virus Daily Stats – February 2021 – Covid Normal (as much as possible)

*Please note that the “Aus Active & Aus ROTs columns do not include the NSW ROTs.  (ROTs = Returned Overseas Travellers)

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus ROTs Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Vic ROTS Increase	*Aus Active Infection	*Aus ROTs	Vic Active Infection	Vic ROTs
01/02	28,817	7	7	20,449	1	1	61	44	21	21
02/02	28,820	2	2	20,450	1	1	61	43	22	22
03/02	28,830	6	6	20,450	0	0	57	42	21	21
04/02	28,835	6	5	20,452	3	2	51	39	21	21
05/02	28,839	4	4	20,455	3	3	53	40	24	23
06/02

	US & UK Daily New Infections & Death Numbers
Date	US New Infections	US Daily Deaths	UK New Infections	UK Daily Deaths
31/01/21	136,252	2,640	23,400	1,205
01/02/21	110,470	1,789	21,190	590
02/02/21	130,759	1,881	18,668	407
03/02/21	110,679	3,389	16,906	1,451
04/02/21	119,235	3,796	19,215	1,322
05/02/21

Country	Population	Infected No	Infected Increase	Deaths No	Deaths Increase No	Deaths per Million Population
Belgium	11,500,000	713,271	16,629	21,173	294	1841
UK	68,000,000	3,871,825	156,771	109,335	7,448	1608
Spain	47,000,000	2,913,389	139,375	60,370	3,079	1284
Italy	60,000,000	2,583,790	82,643	89,820	2,931	1497
Sweden	10,000,000	580,916	20,444	11,939	514	1194
France	65,000,000	3,251,160	144,301	77,595	3,139	1194
USA	331,000,000	27,138,401	994,008	461,385	22,478	1394
Brazil	213,000,000	9,339,420	338,935	227,563	7,326	1068
Mexico	129,000,000	1,874,092	85,187	159,533	7,517	1237
South Africa	59,000,000	1,463,016	32,368	45,344	2,794	769
Russia	146,000,000	3,901,204	156,532	74,684	3,608	512
World	7,800,000,000	104,861,308	3,482,679	2,275,840	94,293	292
India	1,300,000,000	10,790,909	88,878	154,734	849	119
Australia	25,000,000	28,829	44	909	0	36
New Zealand	5,000,000	2,308	13	25	0	5

Corona Virus International Stats as at 05/02/2021