55,300 daily cases in a city of 7.4 million. From Our World in Data we find the highest daily case of other places in the pandemic so far. And it comes out that Hong Kong has the highest per capita daily cases of anywhere. Also worth noting: all other countries have plunging cases. In HK still going up. Cause we followed Zero Covid policy.
I’ll show the stats soon. Right now I’m going out for a bike ride.
My guess for the reason we have world-beating daily cases: because up until Omicron, and still, we pursued a Zero Covid policy. We had virtually no cases until December. And only a few deaths. And we’re feeling oh so superior. Ow it comes home to roost. Where others have suffered previous waves, which have brought some immunity, we were entirely naive to the virus. That’s my guess. I’ve seen no reporting that we have the highest per capita daily cases in the world, let alone why that might be.
MORE IMPORTANT: Deaths per million also highest:
ADDED: Reasons for high death rates: very low vaccination rates for the elderly. For various reasons. And average age of Covid deaths in Hong Kong: 86.
ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA
I’m not quite correct about the above -- that we’re the highest in the world on daily cases of Covid -- but I’m nearly right.
Here’s the list of 15 countries, I’ve chosen randomly, sorted by their maximum daily cases per million:
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| Source, my spreadsheet based on Worldomter |
Why are Denmark and Israel above Hong Kong? Partly in the case of Denmark because they have recognised world-beating testing regime. Otherwise I don’t know. But still, the fact remains: Hong Kong is right up there in terms of number of cases per day. As measured against countries that are now through the Omicron wave. [ADDED: as of 4 March is above France at 7,679 per million]
And, btw: All the countries in the table above, apart from Hong Kong, have gone through the wave, with numbers having plunged. You can see it yourself at Worldometer. I’ve found no other major country with higher daily deaths per million.
Which leads to my prediction: we are just days away from the peak in Hong Kong and the end of the wave will be around Mid April. There you have a Hard Prediction.
Yet the government is doing all this palaver, lockdowns, quarantine facilities, mass testing, etc. etc... so you can your house that they will claim this downturn in the virus as a victory for them and their policies. But it will happen -- would have happened -- anyway. That’s what the experience of other places tells us. That the Science, in other words.
What of Deaths per million for those same countries? Do they correlate with the numbers of cases per day? Short answer: NO.
A “Correlation coefficient” of less than 0.6 means no real correlation. So one of 0.16 means really really no correlation. The fact that it’s negative means, if anything, that higher daily cases means lower deaths. Which of course is nonsense and only confirms: there is no correlation.
And yet, how are we doing, all of these countries above, in terms of deaths per million when it’s ranked?
Answer: Hong Kong is at the bottom. We have the lowest deaths per million:
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| Meanwhile: 71,354 people leaving Hong Kong 1% of our population in one month |
