Easing again?

The summer bulge seems to have eased a bit in the fortnight since the graphic of reference 1, mainly because 'rest of Asia' seems to be easing. The US and Mexico seem to be back into growth, while the rest of Europe, Middle East and Africa are large and steady. Let's hope we are not in for a repeat of last year, with a modest bulge in the summer and big bulges in the winter following.

No progress with where Russia, Australia and the Pacific islands figure and a quick look around the FT site failed to help, either with the answer or with a suitable contact point, although the people who ought to know should be in the 'FT Visual & Data Journalism team'. Maybe I will try the catch-all phone number tomorrow.

I also wondered about latitude and the fact that winter up north is summer down south. From reference 2, I learn that: 'just under 90 percent of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere. In fact, more than half of all humans can be found north of 27 degrees latitude above the equator. For reference, 27 degrees north passes through South Padre Island in Texas'. To be found at the bottom of the pink zone, No.5, in the graphic below. So maybe half the world's population live in the northern third of the globe where winter means what it does here in the UK.

While reference 3 offered the graphic above, with the world divided into ten bands of latitude, each containing a tenth of the world's population, rather than the population by latitude that I was looking for. Neat graphic, just the same.

Maybe it would be more interesting to match coronaviral deaths to mean monthly temperature, perhaps to some other meteorological variables as well, but that would involve a fair amount of work and I doubt whether I will do it. Maybe the people at reference 4 have already done it - despite a quick look suggesting they are mainly interested in England & Wales, rather than the world at large.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/its-not-all-over.html.

Reference 2: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-percentage-worlds-population-lives-northern-1073876. Reliability unknown.

Reference 3: https://digg.com/2019/worlds-population-by-latitude. Reliability unknown.

Reference 4: https://www.data-mashup.org.uk/research-projects/climate-weather-infectious-diseases/.