In the middle of May 2024 we tend to believe the Covid-19 pandemic is over. However, towards the beginning of the year 2024 in the U.S. we observed at the peak about 2500 deaths per week. In Germany deaths/week amounted to 250. Compared to the overall population size killing is more pervasive in the U.S. than in Germany. The map of the specialized agency “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” (CDC) in the U.S. shows the coastal regions to be more affected than the center. Population density seems to be still a driver of the spread of infections, illness and deaths. The timeline of deaths due to Covid-19 infections for Germany follows a broadly similar pattern, albeit on a lower level even if roughly accounting for population size (RKI-data). As we tend to forget what the pandemic caused as social and economic disaster in societies, we have to stay alert as the major prevention of Covid-19. Learn to live with the virus around us. This means to keep up our preventive levels of hygiene as well as monitoring of trends.
Many thanks to all those who do the sometimes boring number crunching for us. This includes the medical doctors who bother to do the timely reporting of new infectious diseases on a regular basis.