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The Impact of COVID-19 on Email Marketing 

Covid-19 is causing a tremendous impact on online marketing. The pandemic has transformed how we interact with one another, make purchasing decisions, and consume advertising. These seismic shifts in consumer behaviour have accelerated trends already on the rise pre-pandemic. 

Weekly update and year comparison.
This week all numbers are down due to the holidays. But that's every year so year on year comparison still works.


In total 3.45 million new cases were reported last week (down from 4.04 million) to a total of 664,483,556
Also another 11,902 more deaths were reported (down from 14,410) to a total of 6,696,134
USA reported 307K new cases (down from 459K) and 2,043 more deaths (down from 2,969)
Europe reported 598K new cases (down from 1.03 million) and 3,535 more deaths (down from 5,732)

The continents

Only Asia and Africa resist the Christmas dip, although Africa has been low on reporting for a year already.

Corners of the world

No Christmas dip in Japan, currently dealing with it's highest daily death toll since the pandemic began. It also seems to have a higher case fatality ratio compared to their last biggest peak at the start of September. CFR was 0.13% (highest 7-day average cases / highest 7-day average reported deaths) start of September, currently it's 0.19%. Probably under reporting of infections, the actual numebr of infections is likely much higher.

China is also still going up despite only reporting symptomatic cases with vastly reduced testing.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/china-faces-bumpy-road-to-normal-as-infections-surge-1.6212598



Experts already slam the proposed extra testing on Chinese travelers
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/covid-19-travel-restrictions-for-china-arrivals-not-effective-little-bit-absurd-infectious-disease-experts-1.6213083

Testing requirements implemented on travellers arriving from China due to the country’s surge in COVID-19 cases are "ineffective" and "a little bit absurd," according to two infectious disease experts.

Following the easing of COVID-19 polices in China, which was quickly followed by a spike in cases, the U.S., Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Italy announced testing requirements for all travellers entering from China in the past week.

One expert who spoke to CP24 on Thursday said he believes the government is doing enough to prevent cases from coming into Canada but that testing policies are "performative" and not the solution.

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist, said the measures taken by countries hoping to prevent cases from China are not "effective", citing Canada should not follow suit.

"If the goal is to keep COVID-19 out of Canada, a policy like that doesn't really do much. We have plenty of COVID-19 here already," Bogoch said in an interview CP24 Breakfast on Thursday. "If the goal here is to prevent new variants of concern from landing in Canada, well we've seen this play out multiple times before; we had policy related to travel with the United Kingdom with the Alpha variant."

The concern is the rapid spread of COVID-19 leading to a new mutation of the virus. Bogoch said after past testing policies were implemented, COVID-19 still found its way into Canada.

"These policies aren't effective," Bogoch said. "Let's not pretend for a second, that requiring a negative test prior to travel from an individual country is going to prevent us from importing COVID-19 or importing variants of concern."



Anyway it's all politics and economics. With only some countries in Europe imposing restrictions any effect is rendered useless anyway.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-19-travel-curbs-against-chinese-visitors-discriminatory-state-media-1.6212920



Year over year comparison shows that Covid is more around than ever:

Wordwide:

2020 84.4 million reported infections, 1,834,484 reported deaths (2.17%)
2021 204 million reported infections, 3,618,188 reported deaths (1.77%)
2022 376 million reported infections, 1,243,462 reported deaths (0.33%)

Case fatality ratio went down a lot. The most vulnerable have passed while the vaccines and new treatments do their job to make the disease less lethal. However it's more active than ever and it seems every week I hear of another friend / acquaintance getting it.

USA:

2020 20.6 million reported infections, 356,445 reported deaths (1.73%)
2021 35.1 million reported infections, 490,460 reported deaths (1.40%)
2022 46.8 million reported infections, 271,051 reported deaths (0.58%)

Europe:

2020 23.9 million reported infections, 547,499 reported deaths (2.29%)
2021 63.8 million reported infections, 979,894 reported deaths (1.54%)
2022 155 million reported infections, 454,358 reported deaths (0.29%)

North America:

2020 23.6 million reported infections, 517,565 reported deaths (2.19%)
2021 42.4 million reported infections, 727,582 reported deaths (1.72%)
2022 55.4 million reported infections, 333,787 reported deaths (0.60%)

Asia:

2020 20.8 million reported infections, 338,426 reported deaths (1.63%)
2021 63.9 million reported infections, 916,107 reported deaths (1.43%)
2022 122 million reported infections, 257,222 reported deaths (0.21%)

South America:

2020 13.3 million reported infections, 363,696 reported deaths (2.74%)
2021 26.6 million reported infections, 828,362 reported deaths (3.12%)
2022 27.1 million reported infections, 149,914 reported deaths (0.55%)

Africa:

2020 66.2K reported infections, 66,224 reported deaths (2.36%)
2021 163K reported infections, 162,799 reported deaths (2.32%)
2022 29.3K reported infections, 29,321 reported deaths (1.00%)

Oceania:

2020 48.4K reported infections, 1,059 reported deaths (2.19%)
2021 510K reported infections, 3,444 reported deaths (0.67%)
2022 13.1 million reported infections, 18,860 reported deaths (0.14%)


New Zealand's strategy to hold off the disease worked. They got the bulk of their deaths at the much lower Case fatality ratio thanks to waiting for vaccines and treatments to become available. No doubt NZ also had a smarter way to ease restrictions than China is doing now...

Africa couldn't hold it off that long and was slow to receive vaccines. Combined with lower ability to test cases, Africa got the second highest second year Case Fatality Ratio. It's still the highest of all this year, yet testing is very minimal in Africa.

South America faced some very deadly waves driving their second year CFR up to the highest overall. South America is also a bit of an outlier in that their third year infections don't tower over their second year, no doubt reduced testing.


Anyway stay safe in the new year. The pandemic is not over, definitely not gone. But if you had it once already you know what to expect :/ We've had it twice now and definitely know we need to do everything to prevent a third round. My wife just lost her sense of smell and taste again a couple days ago. Hopefully it's long Covid and not a new round. We all had the stomach flu after Christmas, maybe a side effect of that. 2022 be gone, F off, never come back!

@SvennoJ

Thanks for the consistent weekly write ups over the years. Crazy it has come to this. Hopefully the scientists have been working on something even more effective through the years.

God I can't believe its been almost 3 years since I wrote up this thread. What a surreal time it has been indeed. The situation in China certainly looks grim right not, but notwithstanding that I'm glad life has (mostly) returned to normal.

Except for XBB.1.5, not much happening in the variant soup right now. Not included here is XBF, which is a BA.5/BA.2.75 recombinant common in Oceania that is also reasonably fit and growing in-between CH.1.1 and XBB.1.5 on average.

The XAY 'Deltacron' recombinant is also persisting at low levels in some countries, and could become relevant if it picks up some extra mutations.

The healthy and under 50 won't be offered the booster anymore in the UK. Incredible how quickly things are changing and how no one cares anymore....

I am not following global news closely these days, is this happening anywhere else?

Yeah Covid has dropped off most people's radar, even though you still regularly hear of people getting it :/

Anyway reported cases and deaths keep dropping, some would be from less testing but it seems we're still heading the right way. My kids have just fallen ill again, half our oldest' class is home vomitting. Our oldest has a nasty cough and fever, youngest a fever. Home sick again. No clue if it's Covid, probably not. Everything else is grabbing a chance now to make everyone sick, got to get that immune system back up after all that isolating.

Sorry, I should've made my question clearer. I was specifically asking if the booster is dropped for those under 50 elsewhere in the world

Denmark? And AFAIK in Brazil, you're also recommended to take just the third dose if you're under 50.

I'm sure there are more though.

The world continues to wind down from Covid monitoring, also worldometer is now scaling back:

Effective February 1, 2023, the Coronavirus Tracker has switched from LIVE to Daily Updates.
As a number of major countries have now transitioned to weekly updates, there is no need anymore for immediate updates throughout the day as soon as a new report is released. On January 29, 2020, Worldometer started tracking the coronavirus, providing the most timely and accurate global statistics to all users and institutions around the world at a time when this was extremely challenging. We thank everyone who participated in this extraordinary collaborative effort.

Still tracking, only 1.1 million new cases reported in the past 7 days (less than a third of the last week of December) and 9 thousand deaths (2/3rds of the last week of December). Reporting is dropping faster, yet deaths are under 10K a week again.




Meanwhile the virus seems to live on in the deer population
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/white-tailed-deer-harbouring-covid-19-variants-thought-to-be-nearly-extinct-in-humans-study-1.6259176

White-tailed deer may be a reservoir for COVID-19 variants of concern that no longer circulate among people, including Alpha, Delta and Gamma, according to new research out of Cornell University.

"Findings indicate that white-tailed deer – the most abundant large mammal in North America – may serve as a reservoir for variant SARS-CoV-2 strains that no longer circulate in the human population," the authors wrote, adding that the findings "raised concerns about the role of white-tailed deer in the epidemiology and ecology of the virus."

They also revealed that the viral RNA sequences in the deer were dramatically different from those in humans, suggesting the virus had adapted, or mutated, in its new hosts.

"Our analysis suggests the occurrence of multiple spillover events (human to deer) of the Alpha and Delta lineages with subsequent deer-to-deer transmission and adaptation of the virus," the authors wrote.

"Detection of VOCs in white-tailed deer long after their circulation in humans raises questions about whether deer, acting as a reservoir for the virus, could introduce the variants into other animal populations or even back into human populations. SARS-CoV-2 has also been detected in deer populations in Canada. The National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in 2021 found deer in Quebec that appeared otherwise healthy were harbouring the virus.

"The findings are important in that they demonstrate that there is a risk of contact with infectious SARS-CoV-2 during handling and processing of white-tailed deer carcasses, which could lead to spillback via deer-to-human transmission of the virus," the authors wrote.