International COVID-19 Megathread

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy's cases per day have been growing for a bit now and yesterday they were almost 1,000 and this is pretty concerning.
On the other hand they seem to be asymptomatic/mild/etc. for the most part and deaths per day are still close to zero

P.S. Should we update the name to the thread? "10 million cases and counting" sounds kind of a pretty big understatement now that we are at 23 million cases.

[Battista Minola 1616]

In the last few days the number of cases per day in Italy has remained pretty stable (around 1,400) but I am not sure how hopeful or relieved to be about this.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Some good news from Italy: Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/sep/02/coronavirus-live-news-us-wont-cooperate-with-who-vaccine-china-uk-trump-brazil-cases-near-4m

1. Do you need to be such a dick?

2. You gave me a glimpse of hope with "Some good news from Italy" and then... nothing.

3. Berlusconi is still a rascal with power (and a dick himself).

[Battista Minola 1616]

Speaking of racially related things, my city has just had a COVID outbreak and it is apparently centered on the Dominican community.*

I don't know who's more stupid between those who think that mentioning this at all is xenophobic and those who have actual xenophobic takes about it.

*for reference it's the largest immigrant community present in La Spezia.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Do they live in multigenerational households?

Are you asking me?

Presumably yes, given that it is a somewhat common thing in Italy anyway, but the outbreak is not really related to that, but more to parties and gatherings etc.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Today the United States have overtaken Italy for number of deaths in proportion to the total population (something that likely will never come back) and as an Italian who engages with a lot of American news, it makes me feel strange.

[Battista Minola 1616]

New cases per day in Italy have been creeping up pretty slowly. I guess "flatten the curve" is real (fingers crossed).

In other news, PLEASE someone make PSOL come back here and rename the thread, we have just surpassed 1,000,000 deaths and the number of cases is above 33,000,000.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy has now broken hard 2,000 new cases per day. We have barely surpassed 36,000 total deaths. It's pretty sad. Well ok it's nowhere near as sad as March was actually.
I pray the curve does not explode again like it has done for example in France and Spain.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy has now broken hard 2,000 new cases per day. We have barely surpassed 36,000 total deaths. It's pretty sad. Well ok it's nowhere near as sad as March was actually.
I pray the curve does not explode again like it has done for example in France and Spain.

4,458 new cases yesterday. What can I say. It's been good guys.
Damn.

[Battista Minola 1616]

4,458 new cases yesterday. What can I say. It's been good guys.
Damn.

5,372 today

Ding ding ding

This is (probably) not going to end well.

[Battista Minola 1616]

No info from Switzerland - really?

The Swiss hole in maps of Europe has already become a timeless classic.

Interesting though that data are displayed for Norway, Iceland and the UK.

That's because Norway, Iceland and the UK (and Liechenstein which is also not in the EU) are all participants in the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, while Switzerland is not.

Specifically, because this happened. 😏

Get used to it Brits, this is your future.

Ticino voting like the Germans grrr

Still, it was in 1992. No new one in sight? The United Kingdom had had a referendum on the CEE in 1975 (supportive).

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy has spiked in an absurd way. More than 10,000 new cases yesterday. We are over 400,000 total cases now.

New restrictions are being considered by the government.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy had 19,000 new cases today and 91 new deaths today.

It just feels so absurd and insane. I am just glad death rates seem much lower than in the spring, but it ain't saying so much.

[Battista Minola 1616]

The weekly number of new cases seems to have peaked in the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands, although that could be statistical artefacts of limited testing capacity. Let's hope that deaths will begin to decline very soon, too. It would be really interesting to see the real numbers for these countries, i.e. how many people have been infected so far.

Also Bergamo province has now the lowest case rate of Northern Italy which makes sense because it was hit the hardest by the wave in March with an overmortality of ca. 0.5% of the whole population.

Yeah, cases in BG are growing very slowly compared to most of the rest of Italy. The nearby province of Brescia has actually been following a very similar curve too.

[Battista Minola 1616]

The number of new cases per day is now falling again in Italy (of course it is still incredibly high), and the number of active cases and deaths per day may be starting decreasing just now. Let's hope.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy will have specially hard restrictions during the winter holiday period, and I found some of them nonsensical or inconsistent. Of course I have already forgotten most of the specifics, I rarely go out anyways. Whatever.

Daily new cases have been decreasing for a while now, and daily deaths are currently starting to decrease as well. But the levels are still so high...

This new mutation found in the UK is giving me very bad feelings. I can only await vaccinations I guess.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy's numbers seem to have stabilized, which is pretty bad since they are still too damn high, but fortunately not nearly as high as e.g. United Kingdom or Portugal.

Ah also restrictions now are officially regionally-based, with regions divided into "zones" (from the strictest to least, red zone, orange zone, yellow zone, and maybe a white zone will be introduced as well?) based on how badly the outbreak is looking in each one.
Liguria is in the yellow zone right now, which means restrictions are quite loose but there are still funny things like a 10 pm curfew about doing stuff in general and a 6 pm curfew about eating and drinking inside establishments, and what can I say, it feels completely random.

[Battista Minola 1616]

A sad new mark has been reached: 2 million deaths worldwide. Also, the number of total cases has surpassed 90 million and may break 100 million before the end of January. Don't know if PSOL wants to update the thread title to reflect this.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Because polling is always fun - from Sotomo/SSR, 41% of Swiss people want to be vaccinated "as soon as possible" (up from 16% in October); and 24% don't want to be vaccinated at all (down from 28%).

But when you look at the crosstabs, well, guess which party isn't like the others?

Oh well. UDC being so divergent and so rabidly against the vaccine is completely unsurprising. But to be fair I also find unsurprising that the Greens are the most skeptical of the vaccine among the other parties (albeit much, much more mildly).
Italians being the most pro-vaccine linguistic group I suppose has mostly to do with the UDC's weakness in Ticino?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy's numbers seem to have stabilized, which is pretty bad since they are still too damn high, but fortunately not nearly as high as e.g. United Kingdom or Portugal.

Ah also restrictions now are officially regionally-based, with regions divided into "zones" (from the strictest to least, red zone, orange zone, yellow zone, and maybe a white zone will be introduced as well?) based on how badly the outbreak is looking in each one.
Liguria is in the yellow zone right now, which means restrictions are quite loose but there are still funny things like a 10 pm curfew about doing stuff in general and a 6 pm curfew about eating and drinking inside establishments, and what can I say, it feels completely random.

Liguria entered orange zone a couple days ago, which is so annoying since I can't eat and drink inside establishments at all and there are weird and complicated rules about leaving one's municipality.

I just don't get it, it doesn't look to me that our rates are getting worse these very days.

[Battista Minola 1616]

It looks like new cases per day *in the entire world* may be consistently falling for the first time since the start of the pandemic?

Italy is doing... not so bad on the COVID statistics front. But of course our government has just collapsed because, hey, this is Italy, and I'm mostly following that thing instead.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Ireland should leave the EU. They have far more in common with northern Ireland and the rest of the UK than the EU.

Yeah, I mean they should really just give up on being an independent country and rejoin the UK

Yeah, I mean, I am sure contemporary Irish all hate Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera and the like, and are burning to renege their legacies and rejoin the UK

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy's numbers seem to have stabilized, which is pretty bad since they are still too damn high, but fortunately not nearly as high as e.g. United Kingdom or Portugal.

Ah also restrictions now are officially regionally-based, with regions divided into "zones" (from the strictest to least, red zone, orange zone, yellow zone, and maybe a white zone will be introduced as well?) based on how badly the outbreak is looking in each one.
Liguria is in the yellow zone right now, which means restrictions are quite loose but there are still funny things like a 10 pm curfew about doing stuff in general and a 6 pm curfew about eating and drinking inside establishments, and what can I say, it feels completely random.

Liguria entered orange zone a couple days ago, which is so annoying since I can't eat and drink inside establishments at all and there are weird and complicated rules about leaving one's municipality.

I just don't get it, it doesn't look to me that our rates are getting worse these very days.

Liguria is back again in yellow zone. Yes!

New cases in Italy are continuing to fall, and new deaths as well. We have gotten over 90,000 total deaths however.

I haven't really followed the development of our vaccination campaign at all, but it seems it's going decently? Of course with the government crisis going on right now, that sucks most of the attention in any case.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Italy's numbers seem to have stabilized, which is pretty bad since they are still too damn high, but fortunately not nearly as high as e.g. United Kingdom or Portugal.

Ah also restrictions now are officially regionally-based, with regions divided into "zones" (from the strictest to least, red zone, orange zone, yellow zone, and maybe a white zone will be introduced as well?) based on how badly the outbreak is looking in each one.
Liguria is in the yellow zone right now, which means restrictions are quite loose but there are still funny things like a 10 pm curfew about doing stuff in general and a 6 pm curfew about eating and drinking inside establishments, and what can I say, it feels completely random.

Liguria entered orange zone a couple days ago, which is so annoying since I can't eat and drink inside establishments at all and there are weird and complicated rules about leaving one's municipality.

I just don't get it, it doesn't look to me that our rates are getting worse these very days.

Liguria is back again in yellow zone. Yes!

New cases in Italy are continuing to fall, and new deaths as well. We have gotten over 90,000 total deaths however.

I haven't really followed the development of our vaccination campaign at all, but it seems it's going decently? Of course with the government crisis going on right now, that sucks most of the attention in any case.

Liguria is back in the orange zone, and this is going to be the last update I will give on this front because I am getting a bit sick of flipping back and forth every two weeks.

The curves in Italy are still going downwards, but our vaccinations seem to be slow, and I've heard some people freaking out about the possibility of some COVID variant having an outbreak and causing a lot of damage.

[Battista Minola 1616]

In Italy we have reached 2,500,000 people vaccinated, that is over 4%. Almost 9% of people have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine.
Lombardy is one of the regions with the least proportions of people vaccinated, which sounds pretty bad given that it has been the region worst hit by the virus. Screw Attilio Fontana, really.
The curves of new cases and new deaths have been quite steady in the last week, actually, but I'm not sure what to make of this.
I have mostly renounced on updating myself on the current restrictions at this point - it doesn't make much difference to me.