Mister Sum is ready for something new. Looking at data like the numbers of infected and killed per week has led him to come up with an instrument that provides a reasonable representation of COVID medical reality per country. That would be a small list by country with the week number in which COVID entered the jurisdiction (wk 1), the week number in which the effects of first measures became noticeable (wk x), the largest number of new infections (xmax) and the week in which this was measured (wk max), the number of new infections (#nw) measured in the week viewed (wk nw) together with the corresponding curve or line (curve nw – upward, downward or tilting / constant). For the seven jurisdictions, the thermometer’s measures for week 30 would look like this in a table:
| Country | wk 1 | wk x | #max | wk max | #nw | wk nw | curve nw |
| PRC | wk 0 | wk 5 | 33.000 | wk 7 | 128 | wk 30 | constant |
| USA | wk 9 | wk 14 | 513.000 | wk 30 | 513.000 | wk 30 | up |
| F | wk 9 | wk 14 | 30.800 | wk 14 | 6.000 | wk 30 | up |
| UK | wk 9 | wk 15 | 32.500 | wk 15 | 4.600 | wk 30 | constant |
| NL | wk9 | wk 14 | 7.350 | wk 15 | 1.130 | wk 30 | up |
| BR | wk 10 | wk 16 | 301.000 | wk 30 | 301.000 | wk 30 | up |
| Global | wk 0 | wk 5 | 1.760.000 | wk 30 | 1.760.000 | wk 30 | up |
Reading this thermometer is quite easy, if the number of new contaminations is significantly less than it once was and the curve is pointing down or remains the same, the pandemic is under control, otherwise not.
This leads to what we already knew. Control over the pandemic is not an exclusively medical issue. What we expect from our jurisdictions when it comes to contributing to and achieving safety, money, happiness and knowledge also plays a role. It appears that those expectations are different in (1) the PRC, (2) the USA & Brazil and (3) Europe.