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Careful. It's summer in Southern Africa and the population is much younger than the US.

• PaulHoule 5y ago
  In my county today we have 1657 active cases and 16 hospitalizations. A year ago we had 324 active cases and 22 hospitalizations. That is a 1% ratio vs a 7% ratio. Of course it takes time for cases to progress, but that's a big difference. Consider also that they are getting better at treating cases in the hospital, people are vaccinated or have natural immunity, highly effective antivirals like paxlovid are about to become available, and it looks like the story here is similar to SA.
  • nicbou 5y ago
    What about testing? In Berlin, the infrastructure for testing is a lot better than it used to be. The tests are free and readily available, and now they're mandatory for more things. Just across the border in Poland, the numbers look great even though there are no observable restrictions. A bit of Googling points out that testing isn't nearly as prevalent.
    • PaulHoule 5y ago
      We’ve had very good testing in our area for a long time, good enough that our testing effort was written about in The Economist. We have a lot of people get tested routinely such as students at the local uni and my wife when she was working at a nursing home. Sometimes it seems that ratio of people with symptoms to surveillance tests changes but I think it is fair to compare this year with last year on my location with the caveat that a factor of 2 could be hiding somewhere.
• unmole 5y ago
  It's winter in the UK and cases are already dropping.