3 million
Global deaths from the pandemic:
The number of people who have died worldwide in the Covid-19 pandemic has surpassed three million, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The milestone comes the day after the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the world was “approaching the highest rate of infection” so far.
India – experiencing a second wave – recorded more than 230,000 new cases on Saturday alone.
Almost 140 million cases have been recorded since the pandemic began.
WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Friday that “cases and deaths are continuing to increase at worrying rates”. He added that “globally, the number of new cases per week has nearly doubled over the past two months”.
Not good.
In my city, this week has seen a series of new case records. Same in the province of Ontario, which has extended lockdown #3 a further two weeks, after a just over a week of the original four week period. Apparently 20% of the province accounts for 80% of the cases. Not out of the woods by any stretch.
And me? In moments, I’m going to head out for my first shot of AstraZeneca.
High five! In a couple of hours I leave to get my second Moderna.
USA
~ 4% of world’s population
~17% of the world’s reported COVID-19 deaths
Looks like we have a lot of work to make America great again.
Glad to hear it, not Bruce! I got my second Moderna a week ago, and didn’t have any ill effects from it.
I do think, with all the mutations and surges, all the states planning to throw things open as soon as possible are definitely jumping the gun. My school plans to be operating essentially normally in the fall, which might be possible, but it seems like it’s too soon to know that. And now that we have achieved 75% vaccination of our faculty and 65% of our staff, I suspect they will drop the mask mandate soon, even though I haven’t seen anything from the CDC that suggests dropping masks is a great idea, or even a good one.
Go us!
Our Conservative provincial premier has been better than I would have expected. He’s kind of a dick on climate change/carbon pricing, but has been mostly sensible about the virus. I think the latest modelling, combined with the filling up of ICUs, scared the shit out of him.
2nd Pfizer is next Friday… Can’t wait to go drink at the bar outdoors once the waiting period is up.
Maybe Premier Ford hasn’t been as sensible as I thought:
Oh lord. You know what that looks like? It looks like “Well it will be really difficult and inconvenient to fix the bridge here where it’s broken, so let’s fix it way over there where it’s not broken and we can do it much more easily.” Aka why are you looking for your keys here when you lost them over there? Because the streetlight is shining here.
I think my metric for what constitiutes “reasonable” and “sensible” has been distorted by the shitshow that’s been happening south of the border.
I have noticed questionable calls on the timing of provincial lockdowns. First mistake: lockdown number 2 was initially supposed to start Dec. 23, but it was switched to Dec. 26. I’m sure this delay contributed to case counts in January. Second mistake: lockdown 3 started as a “shutdown,” sort of a “lockdown lite,” that still allowed non-essential businesses to remain open. This was a new approach with a mixture of somewhat relaxed rules and restrictions that fell short and outside of the highest restriction measures of the government’s previous colour-coded scheme. It gave the appearance of “doing something” without actually doing enough. I was quite surprised when our store re-opened after Easter. I thought lockdown-lite was overly optimistic, and a mistake: indeed, three days later, Ontario went back into full(er) lockdown. Things continued to get worse, with daily case counts spiking and setting new records miunicipally, provincially (and nationally, too) the following week, many/most consisting of variant infections amongst younger people, perhaps as a result of St. Patrick’s Day partying.
Sorry, I got my timeline messed up. Read “Easter gatherings” for “St. Patrick’s Day partying.” I’ll blame my glass of wine.
Congrats!!
Second Moderna this past Wednesday. It did knock me for a loop. (Bit of a chill, dead tired and loopy as hell), but I will take that over the vastly greater chances of getting the virus.