Blog Day 342 - Friday 05 March 2021

Shrine day yesterday so no blog.  Things are getting back to normal at the Shrine, particularly with the numbers of school groups although public numbers are still lower than usual.  I had a group of about 20 year nines yesterday for a one hour TGW tour.  Typical year nines, friendly, polite and appreciative enough but hard work to get any response out them.  

I have progressed another stage in my application to the ABS to work on a casual part time basis on the upcoming national census.  I passed my online putting round pegs in square holes test the other day and this morning I had my one sided video interview.  In this interview I was presented with five written questions which I had to respond to by way of a video recording.  If I pass this I then move on to an actual live phone interview and so it goes.......

Another day of zeros in Victoria although of course we still aren't taking any ROTs.  I wonder when the state government and by that I mean the premier will have the confidence in his "Gold Class" hotel quarantine and "Worlds Best" contact tracing to open up the state to ROTs, maybe just a teensy bit to start with.  Personally I would be happy if Victoria didn't take any overseas travellers until this whole pandemic is over, however that wouldn't be fair on the other states or the 40,000 or so ROTs waiting to get back into the country.  

Oh, by the way, we are still paying the hotel quarantine staff although we don't have any people in hotel quarantine and are not taking any ROTs to put into hotel quarantine.  So, as well as paying the hotel quarantine staff in Melbourne not to do anything we are paying NSW to take our ROTs.  

The national figures are starting to develop a certain amount of boring sameness about them, in a good way of course.  In the last 24 hours 13 new cases were reported nationally, all ROTs and none in Victoria cause as stated above Victoria isn't taking any ROTs.  

Victoria received the results of nearly 20,000 tests in the last 24 hours, NSW 13,400 and Qld 7,300.  

Victoria vaccinated 2,262 people in the last 24 hours for a total of 10,907 vaccinations to date.  Nationwide there has been 71,000 vaccinations completed including 10,000 in the last 24 hours and including 20,000 undertaken by the Federal govt in the aged care system.

We certainly are not busting a boiler on the vaccination front, if Victoria can do 20,000 tests in a day how come we can only do 2,000 vaccinations?  

Worldwide, not withstanding daily fluctuations we are continuing to see reasonably significant reductions in the weekly numbers of new infections and deaths.  In the last week worldwide there were 2.7m new infections and although this is slightly higher than the previous two weeks the trend is continuing downward.  Likewise at 65,000 deaths the trend is continuing downward.

In the last week the US reported 492,000 new infections, down from 517,000 the week before and down from 994,000 a month ago.  The US reported 14,400 deaths in the last week down from 15,100 the week before and 22,400 a month ago.

The UK continues to show strong downward trends in both new infections and deaths for the week.  The UK reported 50,000 new infections for the week down from 73,000 the week before and 2,000 deaths, down from 2,800 the week before.

Brazil reported an increase in both infections and deaths for the week which is now turning into a pattern of increasing numbers over the last few weeks.  This week Brazil reported 398,000 new infections and 9,400 deaths compared to 345,000 and 7,800 respectively the previous weeks.

Mexico reported small declines in both new infections and deaths with 45,000 new infections and 5,400 deaths reported for the week.

India has shown an increase in new infections and deaths over the last couple of weeks, but given the population they are still doing a marvellous job.  India reported 110,000 new infections and 729 deaths for the last week.

In Europe apart from UK the other countries we have been observing are still battling to make any headway in their virus figures.  Italy reported 128,000 new infections for the week up from 96,000 the week before; France 148,000 new infections an increase from 147,000 the week before.  Italy and France reported 2,000 and 2,200 deaths for the week respectively, both similar figures to the week before.

Spain reported a large decline in the weekly new infections from 63,500 to 36,000, from reviewing some historical figures it would appear that there has been some adjustments made to previous figures.  If this 36,000 figure is accurate it is a great result for them.  Spain reported 1,800 deaths for the week down from 2,150 the week before.

It has been a couple of weeks since I have had a look at the top countries by deaths per million of population and there has been a bit of movement both up and down and in and out.  As usual I have excluded the micro countries and included Australia and NZ for comparison purposes.  The position from two weeks ago is in brackets.

1. Czechia (4) 1,970 deaths per million of population
2. Belgium (1) 1,907
3. Slovenia (2) 1,865
4. UK (3) 1,821
5. Montenegro (9) 1,654
6. Italy (5) 1,639
7. Portugal (6) 1,617
8. USA (8) 1,606
9. Hungary (11) 1,605
10. Bosnia (7) 1,592
11. Bulgaria (13) 1,520
12. North Macedonia (10) 1,519
13. Spain (12) 1,507
14. Mexico (14)
15. Peru (15)
16. Slovakia (new) 1,384
17. Croatia (16) 1,361
18. France (17) 1,344
19. Sweden (18) 1,280
20. Brazil (20) 1,223
21. Lithuania (new) 1,222
22. Poland  (new) 1,181

• Australia 35
• New Zealand 05

Finally plucky Belgium has been knocked off the top of the list by Czechia.  Belgium has had the unfortunate position of being at the top of this table since pretty much the start of the pandemic.  We have lost a couple of old favourites in Colombia, Switzerland and Argentina who have dropped out of this table and we welcome some new players in Slovakia, Lithuania and Poland.

The Slavic and Balkan countries are continuing to feature very strongly in this table.  I wonder if there is some common factor that is causing this, something genetic maybe or cultural maybe.  And interestingly not one African or Asian country appears in this list.

Below is a list of the top countries plus Australia and New Zealand by % of population vaccinated.  Israel still leads this field with 99% vaccinated, the UK has jabbed nearly 32% of it's population and the USA 24%.  

COUNTRY	VACC	DOSES	per 100k
Israel		8,436,312	99,029
Seychelles		80,131	81,766
UAE		6,168,330	63,129
UK		21,599,027	31,984
USA		80,540,474	24,476
Maldives		129,424	24,374
Chile		3,960,845	20,899
Malta		84,129	19,120
Bahrain		303,962	18,523
Australia		50,840	202
New Zealand		9,431	197
Worldwide		275,838,140	3,576

Australia at 0.2% of the population vaccinated appears in this table as an act of charity on behalf of the compilers.  I wonder when we will make a full 1%.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – March 2021 – Covid Normal (for the time being)

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
01/03	28,978	8	8	20,481	0	0	71	61	11	1
02/03	28,986	9	9	20,481	0	0	72	63	10	1
03/03	28,992	6	6	20,481	0	0	72	64	8	0
04/03	29,007	14	14	20,481	0	0	83	78	5	0
05/03	29,021	13	13	20,481	0	0	83	78	5	0
06/03

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
01/03/21	114,686,978	321,386	2,543,285	6,582
02/03/21	114,993,503	306,525	2,550,245	6,960
03/03/21	115,281,061	287,558	2,559,210	8,965
04/03/21	115,760,899	479,838	2,570,837	11,627
05/03/21	116,206,172	445,273	2,580,784	9,947
06/03/21

Country	Population	Infected No	Infected Increase	Deaths No	Deaths Increase No	Deaths per Million Population
Belgium	11,500,000	774,344	16,648	22,141	185	1925
UK	68,000,000	4,194,785	50,208	123,783	2,036	1820
Spain	47,000,000	3,136,321	36,327	70,247	1,779	1495
Italy	60,000,000	2,976,254	127,690	98,635	1,969	1644
Sweden	10,000,000	680,130	32,660	12,943	150	1294
France	65,000,000	3,810,316	148,906	87,542	2,221	1347
USA	331,000,000	29,457,965	492,393	531,643	14,423	1606
Brazil	213,000,000	10,722,221	397,758	259,402	9,445	1218
Mexico	129,000,000	2,097,194	44,928	187,187	5,378	1451
South Africa	59,000,000	1,516,762	9,314	50,366	843	854
Russia	146,000,000	4,278,750	66,650	87,348	2,918	598
World	7,800,000,000	115,760,899	2,703,681	2,570,837	64,750	330
India	1,300,000,000	11,156,748	110,316	157,471	729	121
Australia	25,000,000	28,996	57	909	0	36
New Zealand	5,000,000	2,384	19	26	0	5

Corona Virus International Stats as at 04/03/2021

That is it for the day, see you for more "Fun with Figures" tomorrow, cheerio.