Here's a screenshot of this evening's Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard:
It's notable for several reasons. First, the US is now far back in the 28-day case count—seventh, behind Germany, South Korea, Russia, Vietnam, France, and Brazil.
Second, almost all the case and mortality numbers are likely severe undercounts, since so many countries have simply abandoned any pretence of testing and contact tracing. I would not be shocked if the true number of cases were around 1.5 billion, and deaths close to 20 million.
The numbers for Russia (3.7 million cases in the last 28 days, 20,000 deaths) and Ukraine (458,000 cases, 3,800 deaths) are especially implausible, given the events of the past 15 days. But we'll surely see an explosive growth in cases as over 2 million Ukrainians move through Europe in search of refuge.
The early-success countries have largely succumbed to Omicron. While China pursues its zero-COVID policy, it's still recorded 539,000 cases and 2,600 deaths. Hong Kong has seen 533,000 cases in 28 days, and 2,600 deaths. Vietnam racked up 26 million cases in the last 28 days, and 2,400 deaths. New Zealand had 267,000 cases and 12 deaths; it had only 38,900 cases in the previous 23 months of the official pandemic.
The graphs on the right tell us that the Omicron spike has fallen sharply from its peak of 23,333,000 in the week ending January 23; we're now at 10,706,000 as of the week ending March 6. That looks impressive, but it's still about 5 million more than the three previous waves.
Omicron also drove a spike in deaths, peaking at 75,000 in the week of February 13 and now fallen to 50,400. Meanwhile, vaccinations have fallen from a recent high of 257,000 in the week of February 6 to 105,600 in the week ending March 6.
Yet many countries are effectively declaring the pandemic over, making masks and distancing optional, junking vaccine passports, and dropping regular reports by public health officials. Governments seem to think COVID-19 can now sink back into the background noise with other diseases, while we turn our attention to war and inflation and the next election.
On February 1, Johns Hopkins reported 381,232,070 cases, so we have seen almost 72 million cases of COVID-19 in the past six weeks alone. Even if the Omicron spike continue to drop, the next six weeks will see tens of millions more cases, and likely another 40 or 50 thousand people now alive will be dead before May 1.
We are nowhere near the end of the pandemic. In fact, I expect it will in many ways get worse as healthcare systems really do collapse, and as sequelae like Long COVID affect more and more cases. The pandemic that began two years ago really is in the for long haul.
