Even a vaccine won't stop the virus though due to ignorant, uneducated, imbeciles who believe COVID is "just a Flu", believe that vaccines are full of toxic heavy-metal Mercury that causes Autism or that 5G is what is causing and spreading the virus...
Not to mention there are so many people who have such poor hygiene standards that they probably have every disease known to man anyway and unknowingly spread them via every contact surface.

It will help reduce the spread via the herd immunity concept, but let's face it, COVID is part of the modern reality now, maybe even for good.

Doesn't help that a few individuals in power are not taking this pandemic seriously either.

Nope suppression was the plan all along which second (smaller) waves planned in.

See that 3 to 7 weeks, that's what's failing in the vast majority of countries. Italy has been going on for 13 weeks and only recently dropped back down under 100 deaths per day. The rest of Europe isn't more than 1 or 2 weeks behind Italy.

Many countries are already starting the dance before getting it well enough under control and meeting all the goals of the hammer phase, so we're ending up with a flattened yet long drawn out curve where we sort of accept x number of deaths daily, can't be arsed to do better.

The lower you get it, the easier it is to control. The less strict you are the slower the decline and if you start relaxing restrictions too soon, you risk higher secondary waves and keep the death toll adding up.

South Korea is so far the only place with experience with the dance in a working manner. Japan, New Zealand and Australia are arriving at that phase right now. The rest are all jumping the gun imo. Plus look at SpokenTruth's charts, 23 nations without active cases. It's possible.

A Vaccine for mass application is still 12 to 18 months away (with no clue yet how effective it will be). That's a lot of deaths until then, 2.5 million at the current rate.

The differnce is most other places the outbreak isn't as bad.
Brazil tested 870,000 people, confirmed cases over 414,000.
~48% of the people the test, have the virus.

Now imagine if they tested as much as other countries do?  (Brazil test pr 1m people = ~4100, other countries its 50,000-100,000)
(pretty sure they would have alot more cases confirmed, than the USA does)

Basically Brazil isnt doing anything to try and stop the spread, so its just everywhere.
I wouldnt be surprised if actually like 1/7 of brazil was infected (~15%).

Deaths is probably also massively under reported in brazil.
(Again I wouldnt be surprised, if actual deaths to covid were like 5-10 times their reported numbers.
Brazil probably only counts people tested as confirmed covid19 deaths, however because of poor testing,
tons of others will probably never get counted. The proof will be in the records of pneumonia + blood clot/heart attacks, deaths registered during this time, which they will be labled as instead

Why is it like this?

The chart SvennoJ posted illustrates it pretty well.


USA is the green graph line, named "the hammer", and is like halfways through that phase.
However instead of surpressing the virus, they choose to give up. Gotta save the economy right?

Brazil is the black graph line, named "Do nothing", and is just riseing and will keep doing so, until they reach herd immunite (~70%+ infections).
We cant afford to ruin our economy, so we ll just ignore this virus... and maybe fix numbers abit, so it doesnt look as horrible.
(is this way better for the economy? whos to say, its sure to kill alot more of your people though)

Donathos are you asking relateing to the USA?

20 states in the US are currently in a growth phase, after its partial reopening (1 week ago this was just 13th states).
Theres places in the USA (alabama for one) were hospitals are running out of ICU bed spaces, due to the amount of Covid19 patients.
Some people that need intensive care, wont be able to get it, basically.  And these people are takeing up space, in the ER now.

Alabama saw a 28%+ week on week growth in covid19 cases.



"I don't know who was imagining that the virus would just up and go away (outside of Trump), but that was never on the table: it was not possible, and it won't be possible unless and until we have an effective vaccine." - Donathos

Switzerland, Ireland, South Korea, Austria, Norway, Finland, Denmark, .... there are places where it looks like they "could" potentially fully get it to go away.

Keep the Rt under 1, and eventually it will.

Theres palces were they basically managed that:

The excess deaths don't seem to be that bad in Brazil but who knows
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
They estimate 6,000 excess deaths a week for Brazil (last updated May 19th) yet they only have data for the 5 major cities.
Brazil reported 5,736 deaths from May 13th to (including) May 19th.

That would be the result of reported cases about 15 days earlier, 40,624 cases from April 28th to (including) May 4th.
A case fatality ratio of 14.1%. Estimates based on anti body tests came to a minimum 0.7% infected fatality ratio.
The average age in Brazil is on the lower side so 0.7% estimate is probably in the right ball park.
That means at least 819K people should have been infected during the week of April 28th. Under reporting by a factor 20.

Deaths seem to be about the same as in most countries when it comes to under reporting, testing however falls far short.

Comparing reported cases in Brazil to the USA

While reported cases are under reported in Brazil compared to the USA, USA managed to contain the spread while Brazil only managed to slow it down.
For reported deaths the USA is currently at 1066 per week, Brazil 972 per week. Brazil has the younger population so definitely passed the USA in infections already. The USA is also trending down in reported deaths while Brazil is still trending up.

Brazil is on the mitigation path, the red line, yet less steep as portrayed.
USA is trying the hammer, but as you see, they're not really coming down. At about -7% week over week change the hammer is more like the new normal. That's well over 2 months to half their current numbers.

Herd immunity still takes a long time to reach with many unknowns (how long, how well protected etc)
At the 0.7% infected fatality rate estimate and assuming half of deaths missed, 50K deaths (very high estimate) so far, coming from 7 million infected 15 days ago. Average growth rate of 202% over the last 15 days, thus high estimate of 14 million infected today, at the very most 7% infected today.

And yep, reaching that 70% herd immunity will cost about 1 million lives in Brazil.
(And more when the hospitals collapse under the pressure)

Some of the countries in your "No active cases" pic have active cases for some days now.

Greenland and Western Sahara for sure.

Yeah New York and New Jersey are declining but others states haven't even reached their peak yet or reached them only recently. That's the reason why there are still 20k infections each day. NY and NJ only account for 10% of new cases nowadays while they used to account for up to 50%.

Wow your right, Greenland got 1 person (today) that currently has it.
Before then they had gone for along periode without any cases.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume this person, took a airplane back to greenland, and was likely tested at the airport, and then put in quarantine.
A week or two from now, this 1 person, will have recovered and they will once again be free from it.

Yeah I was aware of the numbers, I'm from Chile so I have been following them closely. It might be that they are severely undertesting or that's actually just the amount of people that felt sick, but with a country so big + Bolsonaro being so carefree about it and calling it a "resfriadinho" I doubt it.

I think the amount of death seems fine given their number of confirmed cases though, we will have to wait a couple months to have a better picture.

Okay I might be wildly wrong then.

However:
The "5 biggest" major cities in Brazil is only about 23million people (out of 212m for brazil).

If they had 5,000+ excess deaths not accounted to covid19 in about a 1month periode there (the 5 cities), if something simular played out in the rest of brazil... that could be like another +45,000 deaths (ontop of the currently counted ones in brazil).  50,000 excess deaths alone + 26,000 counted Covid19 deaths = 76,000 possible deaths due to covid19.


"50K deaths (very high estimate) so far"  - SvennoJ

Nah I think your "estmiate" is right in line with where things probably are, or perphaps even abit under.
Its hard to get a real picture, with just the excess deaths of a few cities, and not the entire countries data though.


The fact that infection rates are possibly so low (7%) and theres still so far to go for herd immunity.
I hope it doesnt get that bad, the losses of letting that many people get infected is far to high.