I am going to make this the last regular, weekly coronavirus in Tbilisi update. Coronavirus just isn’t occupying my mind the way it used to be, and just reporting numbers off a spreadsheet without in-depth, critical analysis doesn’t feel like it would enough value to the discourse on coronavirus for it to be worthwhile to keep doing.
What I’ll do instead is write about coronavirus irregularly – perhaps in response to large events or important issues; perhaps when the mood strikes me.
This is an odd time to abandon my post, given that we’re on the upswing of what is looking like a Delta wave that will probably be much larger than the Alpha (third) wave and possibly even larger than the second wave. But I think you don’t need me telling you exactly how fast everything is going to shit right now.
I got into a stupid argument on facebook about Sinopharm. Some individual said they were not willing to take a Chinese vaccine due to “personal reasons” and doing their “own research.” I’ve tried to be the voice of reason, but it’s an unreasonable world, and I’m tired. If you aren’t vaccinated by now nothing I say is going to make you get vaccinated, and if that’s your attitude you can navigate the fourth wave on your own. For the rest of you I’m just preaching to the choir.
Of course if you have a specific question feel free to write me a comment.
Last Week’s Shenanigans
Last Sunday there were no numbers reported. Late Monday, they reported numbers for July 4th and 5th in aggregate. I have no way at present of knowing exactly how many cases there were on Sunday and Monday. That means I wasn’t able to give a suitable projection. My preliminary projection, based on the numbers up to Saturday, overshot the mark by quite a bit. Numbers decreased by quite a lot on Sunday and Monday, jumped up on Tuesday and Wednesday, stabilized on Thursday and Friday, and then jumped up again yesterday and today. Tbilisi reported 609 cases today, which is the highest number we’ve had on a Sunday since December 20th.
I don’t know whether that should set off alarm bells or not, though, because the numbers have been jumping around so much for the last two weeks even discounting last Sunday’s reporting shenanigans.
Numbers…ish
My weekly numbers are also sort of theoretical because Sunday’s numbers (which normally would have applied last week) and Monday’s (which apply this week) weren’t separated, so my 7-day totals won’t be accurate again until tomorrow. That said, my theoretical 7-day total based on an estimate of how many of the Sunday/Monday cases would normally have been reported on Monday is 4704 cases in Tbilisi this week. My estimated projection based on that would be 5882 cases for next week. But I don’t know how accurate that is – like I said, today is kind of an extreme outlier in terms of having a lot of cases for a Sunday. Based on yesterday’s numbers I would have predicted about 5333 cases for next week, which is a difference of more than 500 cases (more than 10% of the total). There’s just a lot of wackiness with these numbers, which is again partially due to reporting shenanigans. But big picture – we’ve added about 1000 cases for the last two weeks and so we can make a very zoomed-out guess that we’ll add about 1000 cases this week as well, which would put us in the realm of 5700 cases.
Nationwide we had 1000+ cases for five days in a row and the trend is pointing towards an increase for next week. 8104 cases reported in the last 7 days but a few hundred of those will be holdovers from last Sunday; it would be safe to say we’ve had 7500 cases this week. I’d expect 9000 – 10000 cases reported next week nationwide.
News
We had a bunch of rallies this week during which many people were maskless and in close proximity to one another. These were mostly outside but that doesn’t eliminate risk when people are so close together. We’ve seen how large outdoor gatherings in the US have produced increases in transmission, and remember Delta is more contagious. Gamkrelidze says no one is taking any precautions anymore and everything is going to hell and he’s not wrong. He seems to be saying, also, that they aren’t planning to add any new restrictions – just enforce existing ones and try to step up the vaccination campaign. Good luck getting it through anyone’s thick skull that they need to get a vaccine ASAP. Delta is already here. We’ve already lost the race; the next month is just going to be surveying the wreckage and shaking our heads sadly at how bad we let it get. This is why I think we could be looking at the worst wave yet – the second wave was what happened when we tried to power through a surge in the original strain with no restrictions; now we’re going to try to do the same with Delta. Bad idea.
Keep checking provax.ge for updates on vaccine availability. After last week’s cyberattacks I think they changed the link to the booking website – some people were trying to register on Monday and reporting that the site was down, but they were using the old link. I hear second doses of AZ are in country and will be available soon. By the way, does anyone know if the cyberattacks on the booking site were related in any way to the reporting shenanigans? Seems like a big coincidence if they weren’t.
Well, that’s all. It’s been a wild ride but I hope I’ve managed to convince at least a few people that even without absolute knowledge, we can still summarize what we do know, draw reasonable conclusions, and make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Science works. Don’t give in to intellectual nihilism.
Stay healthy!
Georgia On My Mind 