Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stayed Tim Addison from posting daily to the Coronavirus Updates by Expats.cz Facebook page. Checking his stats each morning has become part of the daily routine for both expats and Czechs.

On Saturday 22nd May 2021, Tim announced that would be his last regular statistics post.

An end of an era, although I’m sure a welcome relief for Tim, who has had to juggle parenthood, work and the occasional late night out, together with a daily posting of statistics every day for over a year.

But who is Tim Addison and how did he become the source of Coronavirus statistics?

Nationality: Canadian

Arrived in the Czech Republic: 1993 after completing degrees in both Law and Literature in Ottawa, Canada.

Works: Creative director and strategy director at Hammeragency.cz creating advertising, together with our team, for our clients like Benu, Tesco and Fiat.

Lives: Vinohrady, Prague.

Quotes:

In January 2020, I looked into the latest science coming out of China on the virus and discovered that though this was still only in China its spread was asymptomatic – so I posted on my Facebook site that a Pandemic was coming.  A lot of people thought I was, to put it mildly, a pessimist and this may have pushed me to follow it closer.  The info I discovered I wanted to share with as many in the non-Czech speaking community as possible. The Coronavirus Updates by Expats.cz Facebook page had the largest following, so I dropped my daily info there.  I do this every morning whenever the MZCR publishes their figures. I often combine multiple sources and interesting graphs and I try to keep my voice out of it. 

I have to get up every day for work and to make my son breakfast before school. The statistics from MZCR come out at eight in the morning. It takes me ten or fifteen minutes to collect the data, translate it and post it on Facebook – I usually check for five minutes afterward to see if I have made any typos. On the weekends, I set my alarm to remind me to get up and do the stats. A couple of times, after a previous late night out, I went back to bed after posting.

Some people have written ‘I count on this every day, I look at it every day and it’s important for my work or important for me and my family.’

Something that not many people know about you?

Back in 1994, I realized that in the Czech Republic there were no sitcoms. There were just these telenovelas, like these Spanish-style soap operas and they’d never really heard of a sitcom. So I created a sitcom called Hospoda, which was loosely based on Cheers. It turned out to be a super successful series and was on Nova for ten years.

Unusual or Cool Photo?

Thanks Tim for providing these stats – let’s hope you won’t ever be drafted back into service!