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It's a trend that has been astonishing in recent weeks: the number of new corona infections worldwide has fallen dramatically since mid-January - from a 7-day incidence of 94 per 100,000 on January 11 to 46 on February 18.
And that, although the new, highly infectious virus variants are spreading everywhere.
What's behind it?
There is no single reason to explain this trend - experts agree on that.
Presumably, this pleasing decrease reflects the effect of at least five factors:
Factor 1: The seasonal effect: Even if the summer in the southern hemisphere did not bring much relaxation, experts hope that summer temperatures and stronger UV rays make new infections more difficult.
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Factor 2: The learning effect: Perhaps it has now penetrated enough people how the corona measures and contact reduction can slow the spread of the virus.
Factor 3: Herd immunity: The CDC authorities estimate that for the USA, if you include a generous number of unreported cases, almost half of all people may already have immune protection due to a Sars-CoV-2 infection.
Factor 4: The vaccinations start to work.
Around 0.06 percent of people worldwide are vaccinated - but the proportion is significantly higher in individual countries such as Israel (88 percent), the United Arab Emirates (57 percent) and also in Great Britain (27 percent).
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Factor 5: Virus variants that are more harmless than others could have emerged unnoticed.
Infections would be less noticeable this way.
Presumably, say the experts, a mixture of all these factors has led to a decline in the number of infections worldwide.
And how nice it would be if we could now breathe a sigh of relief that humanity is actually slowly getting a grip on the pandemic!
Unfortunately, however, the positive trend seems to be broken: the number of infections has been rising again for a week, in Europe - and worldwide.
Despite the five factors.