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Yesterday the UK announced something pretty novel. No new deaths from COVID-19. Although that particular number is a bit of a quirk of the data collection, it's consistent with the trend of the last months of falling deaths — and is a milestone certainly worth celebrating.
The trends in the US and the European Union are similarly optimistic, if just a bit behind. The latest data reveals the US is averaging ~600 daily deaths from COVID, way down on the peak of 3,400 seen back in January, with the EU numbers similar to those in the US.
There is also a glimmer of good news in India. Confirmed cases there have been falling for the last 3 weeks (although they remain extremely high) and confirmed deaths have also begun to fall ever so slightly — although experts continue to believe the official numbers are, sadly, likely to be severely undercounting the reality.
Undercounting is exactly what has been happening in Peru, which yesterday almost tripled its official COVID death toll to more than 180,000, after a government review. That leaves Peru with the highest COVID death rate of any country in the world (adjusted for population).
Another region to watch is Japan which has only just passed the peak of its worst COVID wave of the pandemic. Although the numbers in Japan remain very modest compared to many other countries, with the Tokyo Olympics set to start on July 23rd, officials and residents are watching the data closely, with many calling for the games to be cancelled.
Check out Our World In Data to for the latest COVID data for other countries or regions.
Krispy Kreme are the latest company looking to cash in on the still-hot stock market, filing plans for an IPO earlier this week.
Completely stuffed
We've all experienced that feeling of eating one too many doughnuts, but Krispy Kreme management didn't get that memo back in the early noughties, in the company's first stint as a public company. After its IPO in 2000, Krispy Kreme expanded aggressively, with both franchises and company-owned stores — until a big hole was found in the company's accounting.
Krispy Kreme franchisees were accusing management of overloading areas with Krispy Kreme stores. That gave the company a short term boost in revenues, but longer term it meant franchisees were competing with each other, and the growth was completely unsustainable. More seriously, some franchisees accused Krispy HQ of "channel stuffing" — claiming that twice the number of doughnuts they actually needed would turn up at their franchise in the final few weeks of a quarter, in order for the company to meet its sales targets.
Things started to really unravel in 2004, with the company's first ever quarterly loss. The CEO blamed the rise of the Atkins diet and a new trend of low-carb eating. From there things went from bad to worse. Reports of channel stuffing were combined with some unusual financing choices and lucrative buyouts for some franchisees, some of which had ties (like being the ex-wife of the CEO) to insiders at the company.
After restating its profits (down, by a lot) the Krispy Kreme share price cratered and sales stalled for a number of years. After a few solid years a private company bought the entire business and took it private in 2016. It looks like they've been busy since then, growing revenue almost 20% a year for 4 years. Krispy Kreme is ready for its second chapter as a public company.
Air travel is back. Kinda.
The latest data from the TSA reveals that over the Memorial Day weekend (Friday to Monday, inclusive) more than 7.1 million travelers passed through an American airport checkpoint. Those numbers are the highest that the TSA has reported since early March 2020, before the pandemic ground the industry to a halt.
Airlines rejoice
Airline stocks rose modestly on the news, suggesting the numbers were slightly higher than investors might have expected — although the traffic remains around 20-25% lower than a typical day in a normal year (2019 in the chart).
It's going to be interesting to see just how high these numbers rise over the summer, as restrictions continue to ease and everyone jets off for their 2020 vacations (a year late). Whether they eventually rise to 2.5m+ travelers per day seems likely to depend on whether business travel makes a come back. TSA officials have said, so far, that business travel is the one thing that hasn't returned. Does it need to? Or can those meetings and conferences stay virtual forever?
1) A document from the world's largest food company, Nestlé, acknowledges that over 60% of its mainstream food and drinks products are unhealthy.
2) Tennis player Naomi Osaka, the world's highest paid female athlete last year, has withdrawn from the French Open after being threatened with expulsion from the competition for not doing press conferences.
3) Zoom reported a strong set of results with revenue coming in 6% ahead of expectations, although the company expects growth to slow substantially during the rest of the year.
4) Some amusing data analysed by The Economist reveals how swearing on a UK parenting forum would jump significantly every time there was an announcement about school closures.
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6) Humpback whale numbers are growing so quickly that they may soon be struck off Australia's list of threatened animals.
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