Good evening,

October 16, 2020 -- As I complete this report, 9 major metro areas of France, including the city of Paris and surrounding suburbs have just entered a 4 to 6-week curfew with many industry-specific restrictions and fines for offenders. A few hours before the curfew started, a lone Islamic extremist terrorist savagely attacked and decapitated a history teacher, for teaching tolerance in a western suburb of Paris. The murderer was chased and eventually gunned down by police. Yesterday, France was the first European nation to publish a daily report of over 30,000 new covid-19 infections (and 25,086 today). Also yesterday, the world exploded with new cases topping the symbolic 400,000 mark for the first time, ending the day with the staggering number of 423,920 of new daily cases. Today the global report is only slightly lower (416,186), which is still well above the 353,524 daily average of this week (up from 324,974 the previous week). The US has topped any country’s daily reports for the last two days, recording over 70,000 cases – today - for the first time since July. Here is the long list of countries with new daily records set today: Russia, Italy, Ukraine, Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, Portugal, Czechia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Slovakia. Near peak countries include Argentina, Spain, Colombia, France, Great Britain, Iraq, Indonesia, Poland, India, Mexico. Israel ended its third week of national lock down, with measurable results: Israel peaked with 11,316 single-day cases on September 23 down to 1,695 new cases today. It appears other geographies will likely end up considering similar restrictions to bend their raging viral spread.

This week, the coronavirus infected 2,474,665 new patients while killing 36,477 people globally.

COVID-19 in the world today:

Tip: click on any of the graphs for larger and clearer images and click on READ MORE to view the complete articles. Also, please forgive the occasional typos.

An international group of scientists has written a response to a push for a "herd immunity" approach to managing the pandemic, which would involve letting the virus spread.

The WHO last week denounced the herd approach—a term used for vaccines—as "scientifically and ethically problematic," because it could greatly boost deaths and expose more people to a virus that may have long-term health consequences. However, a document, known as the Great Barrington declaration, with a list of supporters of the approach was reportedly embraced by the White House.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America has denounced the document, and pushback gained more steam today with the publication in The Lancet of the John Snow Memorandum, which includes scientific references and has now been signed by more than 2,000 scientists, researchers, and health professionals.

The bad days of July are back: the US (+70,402 at 6:00pm PDT) has confirmed more cases today than it had since July 31, and its daily totals have been higher than any other country, including India, two days in a row. As the map below illustrates, many states are breaking their daily records: Illinois (now ranked 5th ahead of Georgia), North Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Other states have peaked earlier this week and published numbers that are only slightly lower than their days old peaks: Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah, Kansas, South Dakota, and Iowa. Texas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Mississippi are also showing troubling activity.

COVID-19 in the USA

10/16/2020 COVID-19 UPDATE: Reporting 14 cases from the public bringing the total number of reported cases to 4,836.

Of the 4,836:

Today, the seven local counties together confirmed 253 new infections and 8 new coronavirus deaths. In the combined 7 counties, COVID-19 has infected 102,426 and has killed 1,422 residents of our region since it claimed its first central valley victim, in Madera, on March 26, 2020. Our friends and neighbors are needlessly dying, many families are suffering. Science and the courage to follow its logic will solve this pandemic, any other discourse is inadequate.

Weekly Report -- Over the last week, the 31st week since our first novel coronavirus cases were revealed in the area, the numbers of new cases for the 7 counties was slightly lower (-3.5%), but the new deaths were significantly up (+66.7%). As the nation observes a sharp rise in cases and California has been plateauing between 3,100 and 3,300 new daily cases, for the last 4 weeks, we know we still have to keep being vigilant in our behavior to reduce our new daily cases totals so we can safely reopen our schools and our businesses.

COVID-19 in Madera + 6 local counties (+% is the positivity rate)

COVID-19 in the 7 counties together