The current global winter wave is already about 50% higher than last year’s wave, peaking at 14.5 million biweekly cases yesterday. That’s compared to nearly 9.9 million biweekly cases at the peak of last year’s winter wave.
If you compare that to our estimate of last year’s wave without lockdowns in Europe and the United States, you can see that this year’s 2021 wave is STILL HIGHER than last year’s wave.
We estimate that without the mitigations that were put in place, last year’s winter global wave would have peaked at around 12-13 million biweekly cases (and that was before vaccines were available).
On a more hopeful note, looking at the daily case rate, last year’s global wave peaked on the 7th January 2021, which was a Thursday. The equivalent Thursday this year is the 6th January 2022 – just five days away.
If the current winter wave hasn’t peaked by mid-January, well, you can probably guess the rest, but it almost certainly involves a trip to hell and a handbasket.
