Mystics & Statistics

Coronavirus in the DC area – update 36

Weekly update number 36 on the coronavirus in the DC area. This week the D.C area (pop. 5.4 million) increased by 15,790 new cases. This is highest we have seen for this area so far. Last week there were 10,892 new cases, the week before 11,293 new cases, and five weeks ago there were only 4,256 new cases. Around three months ago we had two weeks of less than 3,000 cases a week and now it has gone back up. This has slide out of control and we are still at least six months way from having a vaccine available for everyone.

In contrast, Italy (pop. 60.3 million), the original epicenter of the European outbreak, is still struggling with 15K new cases reported for yesterday, down from the 23K reported two weeks ago. Almost all of Europe is still struggling with controlling the spread of the disease. In the UK (12K yesterday, down from 13K one week ago), France (14K up from 10K), Spain (17K on 11/7, up from 12K), Germany (29K, up from 25K) and Russia (26K). The U.S., which has never gotten the virus under control, had 216K new cases yesterday, up from 180K new cases last Wednesday. This is in contrast to places like China (112 cases), Japan (2,158), South Korea (677), Taiwan (2), Vietnam (10), Singapore (12), Australia (6) and New Zealand (3). 

The number of reported cases in the DC area was hovering around 8,000 to 9,500 a week for several months, then declined to a low of 2,406 twenty-three weeks ago. It has since increased. All the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website as of 1:28 PM: Johns Hopkins CSSE

……………………..….Population…last week…this week…Deaths
Washington D.C…….…..702,445…….21,842….23,854……..704
Arlington, VA……………..237,521………6,417…..7,062……..162
Alexandria VA……………160,530.…..…5,447……5,950………81
Fairfax County, VA…….1,150,795…….31,661….34,996…….629
Falls Church, VA…………..14,772………..109……..128…………6
Fairfax City, VA……..…..…24,574.………..212…..…232………10
Loudoun County, VA….…406,850..……10,302….11,270…….151
Prince Williams C., VA…..468,011….….18,662….20,080…….237
Manassas…………………..41,641….……2,331……2,440………28
Manassas Park………….…17,307…………734….….776……….8
Stafford Country, VA……..149,960……….3,366……3,811…….22
Fredericksburg, VA…………29,144.………..711……….795…..…6
Montgomery C., MD…….1,052,567………34,159…..37,194..1,000
Prince Georges C., MD.…..909,308………42,190….45,345…..969
Total……….…….….……..5,365,425……178,143…193,933..4,013

This is a 9% increase since last week. The Mortality Rate for the area is 2.07%, which is high, but has been steadily declining. Last week, there were 103 new fatalities reported out of 15,790 new cases. This is a mortality rate of 0.65%, although there is a lag between increases in reported cases and increases in mortality. The population known to have been infected is 3.61% or one confirmed case for every 28 people.

Virginia has a number of large universities (23,000 – 36,000 students) located in more rural areas, often tied to a small town. This includes James Madison (JMU) at Harrisonburg, University of Virginia (UVA) at Charlottesville and Virginia Tech (VT) at Blacksburg. Most of them were emptied out due to Thanksgiving and the upcoming Christmas holidays. Many of the students are now home until mid-to-late January.

Harrisonburg, VA is reporting 3,680 cases (3,493 last week) and 39 deaths, while Rockingham County, where the town resides, is reporting 2,667 cases (2,343 last week) and 36 deaths. This is where James Madison University is located.

Charlottesville, VA has 1,958 confirmed cases (1,864 last week) and 31 deaths, while Albemarle County, VA, where the town resides, has 2,161 confirmed cases (1,932 last week) and 27 deaths. This is where UVA is located. UVA had a covid tracker which is worth looking at: https://returntogrounds.virginia.edu/covid-tracker. This is definitely worth looking at, as you can see how they were able to bring the virus under control with a student body of 25,000. Apparently college students are more responsible than many adults.

Further south, Montgomery County, VA has 4,260 cases this week (3,950 last week) and 16 deaths. This is where Virginia Tech is located.

Keep in mind all these increases in this towns is occurring while the universities are not in session. It is currently growing faster than it was when they were.

Virginia (pop. 8.5 million) had 3,860 cases yesterday. Last week it was 2,228. For a long time, it pretty much ran 1,000 cases a day, neither going up or going down. But right now, only one of our 49 states appears to be containing the virus (Hawaii).

Dare County, North Carolina, a beach area in the outer banks, has had 744 cases (654 last week) and 4 deaths. With summer over, not sure why this continues to grow. It is growing a lot faster than during the summer.

Disputed Elections – week 17

The protests in Belarus drag on with no clear end in sight. The demonstrations this weekend were stated to include “thousands” of demonstrators. This is clearly a lower figure than the “tens of thousands” were have seen claimed before and from the more than a hundred thousand protestors that we saw on some of the weekends. Does that mean that the protests are losing virulence, or are they just hunkered down for the long term? The strike last month didn’t do much.

There were more the 300 protestors detained/arrested this weekend. Lukashenko and his son were banned by the Olympic committee from the games. Lukashenko leads the Belarus Olympic Committee and his son is the first vice-president of the committee.

 

 

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from previous months, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

Coronavirus in the DC area – update 35

Weekly update number 35 on the coronavirus in the DC area. This week the D.C area (pop. 5.4 million) increased by 10,892 new cases. This is lower than last week, but it is still very high. Last week there were 11,293 new cases, the week before that 8,625 new cases, the week before that there were 7,348 new cases and the week before that 4,256 new cases. Around three months ago we had two weeks of less than 3,000 cases a week and now it has gone back up. This has slide out of control and we are still at least six months way from having a vaccine available for everyone.

In contrast, Italy (pop. 60.3 million), the original epicenter of the European outbreak, is still struggling with 19K new cases reported for yesterday, down from the 23K reported a week ago. It is bad all across Europe, but appears to be improving. In the UK (13K yesterday, up from 11K one week ago), France (4K on 11/30, down from 10K), Spain (8K, down from 12K), Germany (25K, up from 16K) and Russia (26K, up from 24K). The U.S., which has never gotten the virus under control, had 180K new cases yesterday, up from 173K new cases the previous Tuesday. This is in contrast to places like China (91 cases), Japan (2,014, up from 1,232), South Korea (511, up from 382), Taiwan (4), Vietnam (4), Singapore (10), Australia (11) and New Zealand (1). 

The number of reported cases in the DC area was hovering around 8,000 to 9,500 a week for several months, then declined to a low of 2,406 twenty-two weeks ago. It has since increased. All the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website as of 10:26 AM: Johns Hopkins CSSE

……………………..….Population…last week…this week…Deaths
Washington D.C…….…..702,445…….20,516……21,842….690
Arlington, VA……………..237,521………5,994…….6,417….157
Alexandria VA……………160,530.…..…5,106…..…5,447…..77
Fairfax County, VA…….1,150,795…….29,566……31,661….624
Falls Church, VA…………..14,772…………..97…….…109……..6
Fairfax City, VA……..…..…24,574.…………205……….212…….9
Loudoun County, VA….…406,850..……..9,717……10,302….144
Prince Williams C., VA…..468,011….….17,484……18,662….235
Manassas…………………..41,641….……2,250…….2,331……28
Manassas Park………….…17,307………….713………734….…8
Stafford Country, VA……..149,960……….3,134..…..3,366……22
Fredericksburg, VA…………29,144.…………674………711….…6
Montgomery C., MD…….1,052,567……..32,005….34,159….966
Prince Georges C., MD.…..909,308……..39,790….42,190…938
Total……….…….….……..5,365,425……167,251…178,143…3,910

This is a 7% increase since last week. The Mortality Rate for the area is 2.19%, which is high, but has been steadily declining. Last week, there were 73 new fatalities reported out of 10,892 new cases. This is a mortality rate of 0.67%, although there is a lag between increases in reported cases and increases in mortality. The population known to have been infected is 3.32% or one confirmed case for every 30 people.

Virginia has a number of large universities (23,000 – 36,000 students) located in more rural areas, often tied to a small town. This includes James Madison (JMU) at Harrisonburg, University of Virginia (UVA) at Charlottesville and Virginia Tech (VT) at Blacksburg. Most of them were emptied out due to Thanksgiving and the upcoming Christmas holidays. Many of the students are now home until mid-to-late January.

Harrisonburg, VA is reporting 3,493 cases (3,397 last week) and 37 deaths, while Rockingham County, where the town resides, is reporting 2,343 cases (2,176 last week) and 37 deaths. This is where James Madison University is located.

Charlottesville, VA has 1,864 confirmed cases (1,823 last week) and 31 deaths, while Albemarle County, VA, where the town resides, has 1,932 confirmed cases (1,840 last week) and 27 deaths. This is where UVA is located. UVA had a covid tracker which is worth looking at: https://returntogrounds.virginia.edu/covid-tracker. This is definitely worth looking at, as you can see how they were able to bring the virus under control with a student body of 25,000. Apparently college students are more responsible than many adults.

Further south, Montgomery County, VA has 3,950 cases this week (3,806 last week) and 16 deaths. This is where Virginia Tech is located.

Virginia (pop. 8.5 million) had 2,228 cases yesterday. This is still not good although it is better than last week. For a long time, it pretty much ran 1,000 cases a day, neither going up or going down.  

Dare County, North Carolina, a beach area in the outer banks, has had 654 cases (597 last week) and 4 deaths. With summer over, not sure why this continues to grow. It is growing a lot faster than during the summer.

Their Wehrmacht was Better than our Army

Poking around the internet, I ran across an article from 1985 by the British journalist and historian Max Hastings, rather provocatively titled “Their Wehrmacht was Better than our Army.” It was published in the Washington Post. I had not seen it before (as I went to work for Trevor Dupuy in 1987):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/05/05/their-wehrmacht-was-better-than-our-army/0b2cfe73-68f4-4bc3-a62d-7626f6382dbd/

A few highlights:

  1. The language in the first couple of paragraphs is also pretty provocative. 
  2. The discussion then goes to Liddell Hart.
  3. The discussion then goes to Trevor Dupuy and Martin Van Creveld.
  4. From Dupuy: “On a man for man basis, German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances. This was true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had a local numerical superiority and when they did not, when they won and when they lost.”
  5. From Hastings: “A spirit of military narcissism, nourished by such films as “The Longest Day,” “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Battle of the Bulge,” was perpetuated mythical images of the Allied and German armies.”
  6. From Hastings: “Yet to be a soldier in America has never been the honorable calling, outside a few thousand Army families. It has traditionally been the route by which young men of modest origins…may aspire to build a career.”

It is worthwhile to read the entire article.

Now, these claims were controversial in the 1980s, and a number of U.S. Army officers and people out at Leavenworth personally and professionally went after Trevor Dupuy over this issue. There was a long unpleasant discussion of that story written up by the lawyer Thomas Nutter. He was going to turn into a book, but I gather that effort was never completed.

I do address the subject of the relative performance of armies in combat in Chapters 4 through 7 of my book War by Numbers. 

 

Disputed Elections – week 16

Well, the protests in Belarus drag on. Not sure where this is going. Major events this week:

  1. Thousands protested this weekend. Was it tens of thousands?
  2. They switched the protests to a “march of neighbors,” meaning instead of protesting in the heavily policed downtown, they did about 20+ separate protests across the various neighborhoods in Minsk. I gather this is an attempt to complicate the police’s job and to reduce the number of people arrested. It is a change of tactics.
  3. 313 people were detained/arrested
  4. Lukashenko claimed he would step down after a new constitution is adopted. “I am not going to shape the constitution to suit my needs. I am not going to be the president once the new constitution is in place.” He has been in power for 26 years.
  5. Have no idea what is going to be in the new constitution or when it will be completed. It does not appear that the opposition are putting much faith in the process, or have any role in it.

Anyhow, it appears to be more of the same for several more weeks. 

 

 

 

P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from last month, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

The Soviet General Staff study on Kursk compared to Unit Records (part 3 of 3 – Conclusions)

What we did was a simple comparison of the Soviet General Staff study data on the air fighting in the south compared to the daily records we gathered from the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies. What we found was their were minor differences in the sortie counts, but overall that was close to what was reported in the unit records we had.

On the other hand, the reports on casualties was not. There were outrageously incorrect estimations of enemy losses, which is typical of Soviet accounts. But as significant, the reports of their own losses were low. In particular, our count of Second Air Army losses from 5-18 July was 481, their count was 371. This Soviet General Staff study only reported 77% of their losses. Does this mean that if I draw losses reports from the Sixteenth Air Army from the Soviet General Staff study (as I don’t have the unit records), should I “inflate” them by 30%? (the inverse of 0.77).

Added to that, they simply left out the Seventeenth Air Army losses (182 aircraft). It may have been an oversight or a deliberate effort to downplay their losses.

But, just to focus on the Second Air Army losses, the staff study has the total losses for the 5th – 18th as 371: 172 fighters, 31 bombers, and 168 assault. We have the Second Air Army’s losses for 5 to 18 July 1943, taken from their daily reports, as 481 (See Table IV.32 of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka). This includes 248 fighters, 48 bombers, 180 assault and 5 night bombers. So actual losses of the Second Air Army were 30% higher than what was reported in the Soviet General Staff study, or 28% if one leaves out the night bombers.

One does wonder about the process where even the internal classified post-operation staff studies understate their losses (in addition to many other errors). They did have the unit records available to them. In particular, their table is vastly off on the 5th of July when the Second Air Army lost 114 planes and the Soviet General Staff study reports only 78, but it consistently underreports for every single day. They also do not report the losses for the Seventeenth Air Army, which according to our count was another 182 or 221 planes lost (see Tables IV.34 and Tables IV.35). This does argue that the reported losses for the Sixteenth Air Army may be low compared to reality.

In the bigger picture, the Soviet General Staff studies are secondary sources, not primary sources. Furthermore they are secondary sources with considerable bias and errors. They invariably (grossly) overplay German losses and seemed to try to minimize their own losses. Furthermore their narrative of accounts often downplays certain aspects of their operations. They do have be used with extreme caution, as opposed to treating them as somewhat authoritative.

Now, Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson offer a similar discussion of the problems of relying on the Soviet General Staff studies in their book The Korsun Pocket: The Encirclement and Breakout of a German Army in the East, 1944. It is clear that these are secondary sources with biases that must be used with considerable caution.

The Soviet General Staff study on Kursk compared to Unit Records (part 2 of 3 – Airplane Losses)

This is the second part of my comparison of the data provided in the Soviet General Staff study on Kursk that was prepared in March-April 1944 compared to the Second and Seventeenth Air Army records that I have.

Losses:

            There are one table on losses in the Soviet General Staff study on Kursk that relate to the Second and Seventeenth Air Army. They are provided below. I have broken it into two tables for this blog:

The Air Struggle Along the Enemy’s Main Axis

                             Air          Enemy Losses:

                             Battles   Fighter   Bomber  Total

5 July                       81           71           83         154

6 July                       64           40           65         105 

7 July                       74           44           78         122  

8 July                       65           54           52         106

9 July                       62           49           22           71

10-14 July              152         112           93         205

15-18 July               43           45           27           72

Totals                     541         415         420         835

 

                            Second Air Army Losses:   

                            Fighter  Bomber  Assault   Total

5 July                       36           15           27           78

6 July                       23           —             22           45

7 July                       24           —             13           37

8 July                       24             1           16           41

9 July                       16             1           15           32

10-14 July                49           14           75         138

15-18 July              (the figures in the line above cover from 10-18 July)  

Totals                       172           31         168         371

            Now, these figures have been discussed before. The losses of the German VIII Air Corps was 111 planes, vice the 835 claimed here. The losses of the Second Air Army according to the records we reviewed was 481 planes from 5 to 18 July: see Appendix IV, Table II.32 (page 1424) of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka), vice the 371 reported here. This report also does not include Seventeenth Air Army claims or losses. The Seventeenth Air Army’s losses were significant (182 planes). So, it does appear that the Soviet General Staff study basically leaves out 292 out of their 663 airplanes losses (44% of their losses), effectively under reporting their air losses by almost half.

       This is concerning, for it does appear that Soviet General Staff study is understating the Second Air Army losses, omitting the considerable losses from the Seventeenth Air Army and of course, grossly overclaiming the number of German aircraft shot down. This was in an internal classified report that was supposed to be an analysis of the battle. Hard to properly analyze if your data is not correct.

The Soviet General Staff study on Kursk compared to Unit Records (part 1 of 3 – Sortie Counts)

Yak-9 at war memorial, northeast of Yakovlevo, Belrorod-Oboyan road

For my on-going Aces at Kursk book I was asked by the publishers to include a Chapter on the air war in the north from 5-11 July 1943. For the original Kursk project we were able to access the Second and Seventeenth Air Army records in the south. We did not attempt to obtain the Sixteenth Air Army records at that time (1993-1995). Therefore I was forced to rely on the Soviet General Staff study on Kursk that was prepared in March-April 1944 for the count of sorties and losses. As the staff study also reported the sorties and losses from the south, and I had the records for the air armies involved in that, I decided to do a little comparison and added a write-up of this to an appendix of the book.

Sortie Counts (I left out the table of the sortie count from Soviet General Staff study) :

          The Soviet General Staff study data on sortie counts is similar to the data we have assembled. The data we have for the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies operations are taken directly from the daily air army reports as drawn from the archives. The Soviet General Staff study may used these same reports, or used higher level reports or other assembled reports for their study. But there are minor differences between ours and their reports, so most likely they used other higher level or assembled reports for their study. For example, we have the Second Air Army flying 1,296 daytime sorties on 5 July. The Soviet General Staff study has them flying 1,274. There are also minor differences the next two days, but the two sets of counts are the same for 8 and 9 July and then vary slightly for most of the subsequent days (except for the 15th and 16th, where they again match). After the 5th, the largest difference is on the 12th, where our reports record 10 more daytime sorties. These are very minor differences. The Second Air Army nighttime sorties match in all cases between the counts we assembled from the air army daily reports and what the Soviet General Staff study reports.

            The Seventeenth Air Army is a little more complex as some of their missions were flown into the battle area while other of their missions were flown completely out of the battle area defended by the Voronezh Front. For the Kursk database project, I ended up reviewing each reported mission as to where it operated and made a judgment as to whether this mission was in the area of the Belgorod offensive or not. It does not appear that the Soviet General Staff study did that. For the 5th through the 16th, their estimate more closely matches with the total number of sorties flown by the Seventeenth Air Army than it does with my lower count of the number of sorties flown in the battle area. On eight of those 12 days in question, their totals matches the total we drew from the Seventeenth Air Army daily reports. The day they most differ was on 7 July when they reported 50 more sorties than we counted. We did re-check the original report and our total is 639. Suspect their number of 689 is a typo. As the Soviet General Staff study may have been drawn from a later aggregate report, there are multiple opportunities for typos.

           On the other hand, in the table we assembled of Seventeenth Air Army daytime sorties we had a lower count for “only those that were in the Belgorod Area or attacked the VIII Air Corps” (see table in Chapter Four). It is consistently lower from the 5th through the 16th, which the worse variance being on the 7th, where we count 588 as valid sorties in the battle area, whereas the Soviet General Staff study reports 689. On the 17th we count none in the area and on the 18th we count 12 sorties.

           Still there are a couple of observations we can make from this comparison. First, is that the Soviet General Staff study reports of Soviet sorties flown is fairly accurate in that it matches with records we have from the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies. This is important to note as we rely on the Soviet General Staff study for the count of sorties for the Sixteenth Air Army.

Coronavirus in the DC area – update 34

Weekly update number 34 on the coronavirus in the DC area. This week the D.C area (pop. 5.4 million) increased by 11,293 new cases. This is the largest weekly increase I have seen since I started tracking this for the DC area. Last week there were 8,625 new cases, the week before there were 7,348 new cases and the week before that 4,256 new cases. Around two months ago we had two weeks of less than 3,000 cases a week and now it has gone back up. This has slide out of control and we are still at least six months way from having a vaccine available for everyone.

In contrast, Italy (pop. 60.3 million), the original epicenter of the European outbreak, is still struggling with 23K new cases reported for yesterday. It has gotten bad all across Europe, in the UK (11K cases yesterday), France (10K), Spain (12K), Germany (16K) and Russia (24K). These figures are noticeably lower than they were last week for every country listed except Russia. The U.S., which has never gotten the virus under control, had 173K new cases yesterday. This is in contrast to places like China (85 cases), Japan (1,232), South Korea (382), Taiwan (1 on 11/23), Vietnam (4), Singapore (18), Australia (10) and New Zealand (8). 

The number of reported cases in the DC area was hovering around 8,000 to 9,500 a week for several months, then declined to a low of 2,406 twenty-one weeks ago. It has since increased and appears to be heading back to its old level.. All the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website as of 11:25 AM: Johns Hopkins CSSE

……………………..….Population…last week…this week…Deaths
Washington D.C…….…..702,445…….19,465……20,516……..677
Arlington, VA……………..237,521………5,512……..5,994…….157
Alexandria VA……………160,530.…..…4,768…..…5,106…..…77
Fairfax County, VA…….1,150,795……..27,270……29,566..….620
Falls Church, VA…………..14,772……..…..85…………97………..7
Fairfax City, VA……..…..…24,574.……..…190……….205……….8
Loudoun County, VA….…406,850..………9,020…….9,717…….142
Prince Williams C., VA…..468,011….…..16,283…..17,484…….236
Manassas…………………..41,641….……2,171….…2,250……..28
Manassas Park………….…17,307…………..686………713…….…8
Stafford Country, VA……..149,960………..2,851……3,134..……22
Fredericksburg, VA…………29,144.………..640………674…….…6
Montgomery C., MD…….1,052,567…….29,833……32,005……936
Prince Georges C., MD.…..909,308…….37,184…..39,790……913
Total……….…….….……..5,365,425…..155,958….167,251…3,837

This is a 7% increase since last week. The Mortality Rate for the area is 2.29%, which is high, but has been steadily declining. Last week, there were 69 new fatalities reported out of 11,293 new cases. This is a mortality rate of more than 0.6%, although there is a lag between increases in reported cases and increases in mortality. The population known to have been infected is 3.12% or one confirmed case for every 32 people.

Virginia has a number of large universities (23,000 – 36,000 students) located in more rural areas, often tied to a small town. This includes James Madison (JMU) at Harrisonburg, University of Virginia (UVA) at Charlottesville and Virginia Tech (VT) at Blacksburg. Most of them were emptying out this week due to Thanksgiving.

Harrisonburg, VA is reporting 3,397 cases (3,296 last week) and 37 deaths, while Rockingham County, where the town resides, is reporting 2,176 cases (2,017 last week) and 35 deaths. This is where James Madison University is located.

Charlottesville, VA has 1,823 confirmed cases (1,762 last week) and 31 deaths, while Albemarle County, VA, where the town resides, has 1,840 confirmed cases (1,742 last week) and 26 deaths. This is where UVA is located. UVA had a covid tracker which is worth looking at: https://returntogrounds.virginia.edu/covid-tracker. This is definitely worth looking at, as you can see how they were able to bring the virus under control with a student body of 25,000.

Further south, Montgomery County, VA has 3,806 cases this week (3,502 last week) and 15 deaths. This is where Virginia Tech is located.

Virginia (pop. 8.5 million) had 2,544 cases yesterday. This is sad and is on the increase. For a long time, it pretty much ran 1,000 cases a day, neither going up or going down. Now it is definitely going up. 

Dare County, North Carolina, a beach area in the outer banks, has had 597 cases (554 last week) and 4 deaths. With summer over, not sure why this continues to grow. It is growing a lot faster than during the summer.

Disputed Elections – week 15

Protests in Belarus continue as before. One protestor, 31 year old art teacher Roman Bondarenko, died last week in a hospital, probably as a result of a severe beating by plain clothes police officers (of course, their interior ministry denies this). His funeral on Friday was attended by 5,000 people and there were again tens of thousands of protestors this weekend in Minsk (see picture above). There were 345 protestors arrested/detained this weekend compared to over 900 last week. At least four protestors have died since the protests have begun.

The strike, which was called for on 26 October, has not really taken hold. So for now, it appears that Lukashenko has the advantage although there seems to be no end in sight for the protests. How long does this continue and what is the eventual outcome?