World update. Week over week the daily reported cases have been growing again for the past 3 days, 105.7% average week over week growth.

The USA and Europe keep trading places for reported cases and are virtually reporting the same amount of deaths.
Both are declining. On average Europe is at 80.6% of last weeks cases, the USA at 94.5%.
The USA is currently trending back towards growth while Europe is declining faster.

Comparing the continents

Europe has fallen to the 4th spot for daily reported cases, overtaken by Asia and Brazil.
NA leads, currently outpacing Europe by 7.5K cases daily with a 86.5K gap remaining in total reported cases between the two continents.

Current 3 day average worldwide is 88.9K new cases each day.
North America 29.6%  (USA 24.8%)
Asia 22.9%
South America 22.6%
Europe 21.2%
Africa 3.8%
Oceania 14 cases per day

Corners of the world

Japan is doing excellent, joining South Korea and Australia in the no Covid holding pattern.
Canada is slowly going down, Iran slowly growing, Brazil needs to do something.

Looking at week over week growth in detail

While USA and Canada are both still declining week over week, the margin by how much is getting slimmer and slimmer.
Actually today Ontario basically already failed phase 1, 109% week over week growth, hopefully a temporary outlier.
Japan is the winner, soon too few cases to track in the graph like Australia and South Korea.
Iran currently growing 127% week over week, that's 1.035x per day, or a doubling time of just over 20 days.

Well, let's wait until the next pandemic virus comes from the US, like swine flu did. How will your tune be at that point. But I think it will be reasonable to demand damages from the US. Just to remember: SARS-2 currently is reaching the lower end of the estimations of what the swine flu killed worldwide.

The US is continuing with their course of deflection, deception and denial. Here a few fun recent headlines.

Woman who designed COVID Dashboard for Florida was removed from her position because she wouldn't manually fudge numbers in support of the reopen plans

Trump says he's been taking Hydroxychloroquine for a few weeks

Oversight Committee Finds ICE Misleads American People on Spread of Coronavirus in Detention Facilities

Arizona: Revealing nursing homes with COVID-19 outbreaks would hurt businesses

Those are just from the last few days.

Looks like this guy had the right feeling from the beginning.

Good thing is that we won't actually need a vaccine because it will just go away at some point.

Side note: Isn't it kinda sad that "college educated" means basically nothing in the US?

SvennoJ, thank you for your answers to my questions, and thank you for your charts.

I have one last question for you, and it is based on your previous answers....

Do you believe the world would be better off if China shut down its wet markets?

You talk about Trump as if he has any kind of agency, instead of being a lifeless bundle of nerve ends only reacting to noise and colors.

Nothing will change after this pandemic. For change to be enacted you would need politicians. Sadly there are only a handful of those in the US and neither of them have any kind of power to bring change. Nothing but a complete and total collapse would bring change to the US and even then it's a coin flip if it'll be good change.

No, they need better regulation and enforcement. The trade of problem animals sold there is already outlawed yet enforcement often fails. Moving the bad practices of some wet markets further underground will accomplish little. It's not just China either, many countries in the world sell live animals at wet markets. China does have the population to have the most chance of any transmission to take place.

The world would be better off without the bad practices at unregulated wet markets. Better enforcement is needed. A wet market is nothing more than a market where you can buy fresh meat and produce, any supermarket is a wet market, and China has been trying to convert the outdoor unregulated wet markets into more sanitary supermarkets. However they couldn't beat the prices of the outdoor wet markets.

Eating wild animals is not just reserved to Asia. Hunting is still allowed here, restaurants still serve wild animals, and the farmed meat industry still has many risks as well.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/798644707/why-wet-markets-persisted-in-china-despite-disease-and-hygiene-concerns
https://theconversation.com/why-shutting-down-chinese-wet-markets-could-be-a-terrible-mistake-130625

A permanent shutdown of “wet markets” would affect patterns of food consumption in ways that are unknowable but potentially harmful to public health. It would deprive Chinese consumers of a food sector that accounts for 30-59% of their food supplies. Due to the large number of farmers, traders and consumers involved, the abolition of “wet markets” is also likely to lead to an explosion of an uncontrollable black market, as it did when such a ban was attempted in 2003, in response to SARS, as well as in 2013-14, in response to avian influenza H7N9.

This would involve enormously greater risk to public and global health than the legal and regulated live animal markets in China today. And live poultry and animal markets have long served as a crucial “early warning” site for viral surveillance, including in the United States.

What “wet markets” in China require is more scientific and evidence-based regulation, rather than being abolished and driven underground.

Amazon is back up to full speed. I ordered a couple things last night, it arrived an hour ago with standard free shipping. The guy had his van full of boxes, busy day. Onward on blue-ray out today, no need for cinemas!


Btw what is the oldest thing in your freezer? I cleaned out the back/bottom of the freezer today and the winner was some tv dinner with an expiry date of 2001. It's a mystery how it got in there considering I didn't even move to Canada until 2002 and this is the 3rd place we're living in since I immigrated. A shameful garbage back full of old crystallized mess.

The USDA recommends tossing uncooked roasts, steaks, and chops after a year in the freezer, and uncooked ground meat after just 4 months. Meanwhile, frozen cooked meat should go after 3 months. When vacuum-sealed and properly stored in the freezer, fish can last for as long as two years. Vegetables will last in the freezer from three months to a year depending on what they are. Bread will keep for three to six months in a freezer, but flavors can begin to dull after a month.

I found a bag of frozen cross buns in the back from 2013. Some of the bananas (in the back) that were frozen to make banana bread were completely flat, nothing left but mummified skin, The fridge has the same problem, too big. Have some pickles from 2009 for your burgers.


Maybe it's the stress from the pandemic yet eating habits have gotten worse instead of using the extra time to make healthier meals. All the easy little effort stuff gets eaten first, fresh vegetables are mostly ignored. (Which the kids refuse to eat anyway, can't hit them though or send to bed hungry...) The oven and microwave do most of the work nowadays.

Well, there it is

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/i-m-just-not-going-to-risk-it-ontario-students-will-not-return-to-school-until-september-1.4944536

Schools in Ontario are to remain closed for the rest of the year. Not surprising since even with the crap weather, phase one of re-opening is already faltering. While you would expect lower numbers due to the long weekend (numbers today are test results of bank holiday yesterday) they are actually higher than a week ago. At the current 3 day average Ontario is back to a 105.5% week over week increase, today's raw numbers at 118% of last weeks.


Schools across the province have not been open since March 13. At first, schools were supposed to reopen two weeks following March Break, but in an effort to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, the closure has been extended multiple times.

But no worry...

All students who were on track to graduate from secondary school before the initial school closure will be able to graduate. All students will receive a report card.

In April, three weeks after schools were closed, the Ontario government launched an online learning program to help students stay engaged with the curriculum during the extended closure.

Now it seems up to 80% are not using the online learning programs or participating. Not surprising since this online learning program is a haphazard selection of online tools (Lexia, Prodigy, IXL, BrightSpace, Zoom) all with their own issues. Next to teachers scanning and emailing text book pages assuming everyone has a color printer and stacks of paper and ink. Plus projects that involve materials that most people don't readily have access to at this time. Never mind all the problems trying to turn work in.

Anyway, steady as she goes I guess. 6 more weeks of home 'schooling'.



The border is staying closed as well for another month

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-u-s-border-to-remain-closed-to-non-essential-travel-for-another-month-pm-says-it-s-the-right-thing-1.4944793

The extension on the existing agreement means that the border restrictions will stay in place until June 21, even as parts of both countries begin gradually reopening. The agreement, as it stands, exempts the flow of trade and commerce, as well as vital health-care workers such as nurses who live and work on opposite sides of the border. Tourists and cross-border visits remain prohibited.

I planned two vacation trips in June before this mess started. Had to cancel one of them (full refund) but the other is looking good.
While the borders between the Netherlands and Germany were never really closed, a 14 day quarantine upon return didn't sound all that great. Glad that has been lifted.