Hi John,

>>> the spike of Newly Infected vs. Newly Recovered in Australia
>
>Half Australia's mortality came from one cruise ship that amazingly was just allowed to dock again with 200 cases aboard.

okay, I looked for a similar spike earlier in new cases and could not find an explanation of the massive jump of # of recoveries.

>New Zealand has a better moat than Australia. As of yesterday, NZ had 1106 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 with 1 death (so <0.01% mortality) , 13 hospitalized and 176 recovered. Also only 2% confirmed community transmission: of known causes the vast majority = recent arrivals and contacts. NZ is in week 2 of a comprehensive lock down, aiming for eradication rather than mitigation.

I certainly admire the shallow rise angle of logarithmic scale - but count only times after 100 clear infections.
A morbid, but probably even better start marker in northern hemisphere is 100 deaths...

>Explanations? At this stage more like educated guesses in the absence of antibody tests but my belief is that NZ already has high immunity after (fortunately) summer infections raged through the private school community in January when kids returned from exotic vacations or trips home for Chinese New Year and infected whole schools, families etc etc who thought it was flu or a bit of a cold and just pressed on. Certainly I will do the antibody test when availability increases and am confident I am immune after I got the disease in January and gave it to others I can name who got sicker than me...

Yupp, if vaccine is available only after 18 month (as in doing all the steps previously done to guarantee safety) and the lethality of SARS-2 is that much diminished in summer (yes, description should be along: immune system of humans is less taxed and in better shape to handle virus...), easing up to a level of always having 50% of beds filled with critical cases might be smartest way to operate. But arguing for the policy tried and failed in spring/flu time in GB and Netherlands without further scientific data clearly is premature...

Might also explain some of the Iranian numbers, as ratio of infected vs. death count was much better compared to Italy - Italy having better health services, but older population. Japan with similar age structure to Italy but low #s one of the areas puzzling a lot...

if you come across more info on hemispheric differences, pls. mention

regards
thomas