The Wall Street Journal published a good article recently, summarizing where the US stands in terms of the Covid death rate. Here are the main points it makes:

1.      The death rate remains at 400 per week, which is almost exactly what it’s been since March 2022. Not going up, but certainly not going down, either.

2.      The number of “excess deaths” (i.e. deaths above what would normally be expected at this time of the year) is more than would be expected from just looking at the Covid death rate. A clue why this might be the case is the fact that Covid is listed as a contributing cause in many cases of heart disease and cancer (the two leading causes of death, with Covid holding its own at number 3, thank you very much). So, if you do catch Covid (especially if you’re old), be sure to hope that you don’t develop heart disease or cancer.

3.      Older people are most likely to die (of course that’s always been the case, except during the Delta wave, when it seems younger people were much more likely to die. I’m guessing that’s because by the time delta hit – the summer of 2021 – the older people were almost all vaccinated, but the young weren’t, and they were devasted by the much more easily transmissible delta variant).

4.      Nursing home residents are especially likely to die; in fact, 270 of those average weekly deaths are among nursing home residents. However, only 53% of those residents have received the bivalent booster shot. I don’t get it. Why should it be optional for a nursing home resident to be up-to-date on their boosters? If they think vaccination is some sort of woke conspiracy, let them go home. Why keep them around, where they’ll get sick and infect the other residents, as well as the staff?

5.      Which were the two states with the lowest vaccination rates? Two of the states with the highest percentage of old people: Arizona and Florida. Go figure.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, February 26.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,145,365

Average daily deaths last seven days: 396

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 368

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 104,986,098          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 274,409 (39,201/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 219,245 (31,321/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.3% (0.2% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

Thisarticle in the NY Times tries to answer the question, “How Deadly Was China’s Covid Wave?” This question needs to be asked, since the official number is a ridiculously low 83,150 (for the whole pandemic, although the number before this wave was less than 10,000). Based on four different models, experts estimated that between 970,000 and 1.6 million people died of Covid during the wave (which has now subsided).

Of course, this is bad, but what’s most revealing is a chart comparing some major world countries for their Covid death rates per 100,000 population. China is about in the middle of this list, with either 68 or 110 deaths per 100,000 population (those are based on the low and high estimates of the recent wave, respectively). And which country is at the top? You got it: the US with 337 deaths per 100,000 population, followed closely by Brazil with 330 deaths.

Speaking of US deaths, I just noticed (since I didn’t update my numbers last week) that Covid deaths were about 50% higher in January than they were in December. This doesn’t constitute a huge wave, but it certainly doesn’t indicate that we don’t have to worry about Covid anymore.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, February 12.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,140,017

Average daily deaths last seven days: 529

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 193

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 104,766,853          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 278,016 (39,717/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 127,558 (18,223/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.3% (0.1% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

There’s been a lot written about the fact that six in ten Covid deaths are now among vaccinated people. Does this mean that vaccines don’t work? Obviously, if that’s true, it fits in very nicely with a certain political narrative (not mine, to be sure).

However, my college roommate Mike Howard, just retired as a philosophy professor at the University of Maine, sent me the link to thisarticle, which explains why more detailed analysis of the numbers shows just the opposite: that being vaccinated and boosted provides the best protection possible from dying if you catch Covid. Here are a few of the reasons why this is the case:

First, older people are much more likely to be vaccinated than younger people, and they’re also much more likely to die if they get Covid. That in itself gives a big bias to the numbers. The real question is how many more older people would die if they weren’t vaccinated, and the answer is clearly “a whole lot”.

Second, if you’ve been vaccinated but haven’t had a booster within the past year, you don’t have much immunity left from your vaccination. So you have to get the booster. And now it looks like we’ll need to get a Covid booster every year, just like some of us get a flu shot every year. Of course, the difference is that Covid is still much more deadly than the flu, so if you’ve gotten along without the flu shot so far and don’t think you need one, you shouldn’t assume you don’t need a Covid booster (and by the way, “booster” is really a misnomer. There’s no chemical difference between vaccination shots and boosters).

Third, as we all know, vaccination doesn’t prevent Covid infection, nor does it prevent death from Covid. So the fact that the percentage of people who die of Covid and are vaccinated has risen is in large part just a reflection of the fact that the percentage of people who are vaccinated has risen since vaccinations were introduced. Think about it: If 100% of the population were vaccinated, would every death from Covid be evidence that the vaccines don’t work?

Obviously not. But, to test that idea, you would have to compare deaths from Covid in a vaccinated population with deaths in an unvaccinated one. If the numbers of deaths were the same (and if the number of cases were the same), you could say there’s no advantage to vaccination. Of course, nobody can conduct such an experiment, but the US very graciously “consented” to do the next best thing two years ago: demonstrate that a population with a relatively large percentage of unvaccinated people will have a much higher death rate. And guess what? The US has the second-highest Covid mortality rate (after Brazil) of any large country. The experiment was successful!

By the way, this means I need to apologize to all the unvaccinated people in the US who have died of Covid. I had thought they were just being stubborn in not getting vaccinated, but now I know they had selflessly volunteered to be part of the control group in this huge experiment. It cost them their lives, but it advanced science, which I’m sure will be a great comfort to their families…

Also, I want to point out that Mike has been one of the foremost advocates of Universal Basic Income for decades – and now it looks like the idea is gaining a lot of momentum (in fact the child tax credit implemented during the worst of the pandemic, but unfortunately not renewed last year, was in many ways a test – quite successful – of that idea). Mike recently published a good articleon UBI on Scientific American’s online service.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

Since early April 2022, as we were coming down from the huge Omicron deaths numbers of January through March, US Covid deaths have varied within a tight range of 250-600 per day (with the great majority of weeks falling in the 300-450 range). Since even this range is too high (flu deaths are on average less than 100 per day), I’ve been looking for the numbers to go below 250 – and stay below that for some time – before I’ll say the pandemic is over in the US.

I have good news and bad news. The good news is we’ve finally broken out of the range! But the bad news is we’ve broken out of the topof the range, not the bottom. Last week, there were an average of 625 deaths per day.

Of course, this might be a transient phenomenon. But unless we suddenly go back to the bottom of the range and stay there, I’m not going to say the pandemic is over (even though Joe Biden did last fall. This was great fodder for the GOP, since this wasn’t an official government declaration. If the pandemic were officially declared to be over, some pandemic programs like student loan deferments would have to end). And I’m going to keep wearing a mask in public indoor spaces.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, January 15.

 I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,125,554

Average daily deaths last seven days: 625

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 401

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.4%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 103,579,333          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 471,196 (67,314/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 439,185 (62,741/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.5% (0.4% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

I’ve gotten used to daily Covid death rates of around 350-500, so I was shocked to realize a moment ago, when I computed the 2022 annual numbers, that the daily rate for last year was 744. However, a quick glance at the monthly 2022 numbers tells the whole story: During the first three months of the year, daily deaths averaged close to 2,000 a day, as the first Omicron wave hit. Yet, daily deaths were 443 in April, and stayed around there the rest of the year.

In other words, 744 Covid deaths a day for 2022 is pretty good, compared to the same statistic for the pandemic as a whole (so far, of course) – that number is 1,094, as you can see at the bottom of the chart below. In other words, since the beginning of March 2020, the US has averaged about 1100 Covid deaths every day, which amounts to about 3100 deaths per million population.

While there are about 12 small countries that have a higher per capita Covid death rate, the only large country with a higher rate is Brazil. Of course, this is no comfort at all, given the aggressive efforts by Bolsonaro to attain the highest possible death rate during the pandemic (of course, some states had much higher per capita death rates. Mississippi claimed the crown among US states with 4400 deaths per million, although they were in almost a dead heat with Oklahoma).

Meanwhile, William Galston, one of the Wall Street Journal’s most reasonable columnists (a low bar to clear, I’ll admit), published a good column this week titled “America is a sick society – literally” (the article is behind the WSJ’s paywall. If you drop me an email, I’ll send you the PDF). It begins, “For most of my life, I rejected the assertion that America is a “sick society”. He continues, “Over the past two decades, however, I’ve increasingly questioned my earlier confidence. Now, in the wake of the pandemic, I’ve concluded that I was wrong.”

He somewhat contradicts the second statement when he continues, “In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, we ranked 29th among the 38 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. U.S. life expectancy trailed Germany’s by 2.5 years, Canada’s by 3.2 years, and France’s by four years.” In other words, he really should have been questioning his optimistic belief long before the pandemic hit. However, for someone whose paycheck comes from the WSJ (which of course fought Obamacare tooth and nail), it’s not surprising it took him so long to realize the truth.

What is the evidence that we’re a sick society? He lists:

·        High infant mortality (we’re 33^rd in the world, behind every European and Asian OECD country)

·        A much higher Covid death rate than most high income countries (e.g., 332 US deaths per 100,000 population vs. 128 Canadian deaths. Do you still wonder why Canada closed off all travel to and from the US for a year or so?). Our higher Covid death rate increased the gap between our life expectancy and those of other countries. For example, our gap with France went up 50%, to six years. Hmm, is it possible there are actually some benefits to single-payer health care, rather than it being the unmitigated evil that so many media outlets – and not just conservative ones – say it is? But don’t worry – we do lead France in one important healthcare metric. We spend more than twice as much per capita as they do (in fact, no other country in the world comes anywhere near our number).

·        But don’t worry. High infant mortality and high Covid mortality aren’t the only advantages the US has, in the tough race to the bottom in life expectancy. We also have significant advantages in drug overdoses, obesity and – how could we forget? – gun violence.

Galston’s penultimate paragraph reads:

In sum, we Americans seem less able than others to control our appetites and tempers, and we are far more likely to resort to mood-altering drugs with lethal effects. We don’t care enough about healthy infants to give new parents in lower-income families the help they need. And despite our wealth, advanced health technology and world-leading healthcare expenditure per capita, our public-health system has performed poorly under stress.

But other than these quibbles, we’re a very healthy society!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, January 1.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,118,376

Average daily deaths last seven days: 445

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 327

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 102,668,952          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 432,857 (61,837/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 475,946 (67,992/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.4% (0.5% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

It would be nice to say this is The Year We Defeated Covid, but that’s certainly not true. In fact, if you look at the deaths numbers below, you’ll see that, after a terrible first three months, average daily deaths for April through November have all been in the 300-550 range, and haven’t exhibited any trend. However, the last three weeks have exhibited a trend, and it’s…up.

The fact is that, as long as there are so many infections (although I don’t pay much attention to the official numbers, since probably the majority of Covid cases are never reported), more new variants will arise. And successful new variants don’t spring out of the blue; they owe their success to the fact that they can be transmitted much easier. More infections = more deaths.

Of course, there’s always vaccination. And if you haven’t received the latest booster and you’re over the age of say 5, shame on you. You (or your grieving family members) will feel pretty stupid if you end up being hospitalized or worse. Don’t wait!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, December 25.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,116,084

Average daily deaths last seven days: 445

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 446

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 102,236,095          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 475,946 (67,992/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 435,261 (62,180/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.5% (0.4% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

WaPo and other papers carried the grim newsthis morning that US life expectancy fell again in 2021, despite the many efforts to declare the pandemic “over” last year. Covid deaths were up over 2020, but they were joined by higher drug overdose deaths, in large part due to fentanyl. All progress made in raising life expectancy since 1996 has been erased. To quote WaPo, this is “a dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation.”

Yes, it should. And life expectancy did rise last year in many other affluent countries, although not all. But the US remains by far the leader in what I call obstinacy-motivated Covid deaths: deaths of people who are unvaccinated and unwilling to follow masking and other public health guidelines. Plus, that obstinacy seems to be continuing, since only about 14% of the eligible US population has received the Omicron-focused booster shot that came out earlier this fall – which has been proven to significantly reduce the chance that a person who is hospitalized with Covid will die from it, even vs. otherwise “fully vaccinated” individuals.

You need to get the new booster, if you haven’t yet. Especially if you’re in my age cohort. Even if people you know want to become part of this year’s death statistics, don’t feel you have to join them. They already have plenty of company.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, December 18.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,112,970

Average daily deaths last seven days: 446

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 427

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 101,760,149          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 435,261 (65,969/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 461,782 (65,969/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.4% (0.5% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

We’re learning more and more each day about why Xi Jinping was so reluctant to relax the Zero Covid policy: he knew there would be a deluge of Covid cases and deaths as soon as he did that. And while it’s still early, it looks like both Covid cases and deaths are growing rapidly.

The problem with the Zero Covid policy is it worked beautifully in Wuhan, with the original Covid variant. That variant wasn’t anywhere near as transmissible as the current Omicron variants, so it was really possible to stop Covid in its tracks with a brief but severe lockdown. However, it was probably never possible for that strategy to work after the Delta variant hit, and certainly after Omicron.

But Xi didn’t adjust his thinking. Of course, that’s the problem with dictators (and would-be dictators, such as one recently in the US): They get something in their head, and the fact that it worked in the past means it will definitely keep working in the present and future as well. Anyone who cares to disagree with the Great Leader will find him or herself (although I don’t see many she’s in the Chinese political hierarchy) on a one-way trip to nowhere, or even an early death due to acute lead poisoning.

If Xi had had someone talking sense to him, that person would have said, “You’re living in a fool’s paradise, with some of the lowest Covid numbers in the world. Lockdowns are inevitably going to fail sooner or later, given the new variants. You face the choice of A) locking down more of the country for longer and longer time periods (with dissent growing all the time), or B) preparing now for when you’ll be forced to end the Zero Covid policy. Here’s what you should be doing now:

1.      Start buying and administering the mRNA vaccines, which are clearly far superior to our home-grown ones. Sure, China has a crash program to develop their own mRNA vaccine, but do you really want to take the chance that it won’t be ready when you’re forced to end the Zero Covid program?

2.      Greatly expand your emergency room beds, which are going to prove woefully inadequate when there’s a big surge after you relax the policy. Ironically, China got lots of praise for the speed with which we built hospitals in Wuhan in early 2020 – remember the 10-day hospitals? Why can’t we do the same thing now?

3.      You’ve got to kick some asses and get the elderly vaccinated, since the majority of elderly (even people over 80) aren’t vaccinated. If this doesn’t change, this will really push up our deaths numbers once the post-policy wave hits. But this requires solving the first problem, since probably the biggest reason the elderly have resisted vaccination is they don’t trust the homegrown Chinese vaccines (with good reason).

So, which door did Xi choose? He chose Door A, of course. That’s what dictators do – stick with their losing policy, since they know they’ll open the flood gates if they admit they were wrong. And now China will reap the benefits of his wonderful sagacity. Ironically, it may not be the Zero Covid policy that finally cooks Xi’s goose. It may be the ending of that policy that does it. At least, I hope so.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, December 11.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,109,851

Average daily deaths last seven days: 427

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 295

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 101,324,888          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 461,782 (65,969/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 369,014 (52,716/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.5% (0.4% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

Nextgov, an online service that reports on activities related to the federal government, published thisarticle this week. I have to classify it as one of the most appalling, but at the same time the least surprising, articles I’ve read about the pandemic.

The article describes a study done at Yale University. It’s summed up early on:

The study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida. What’s more, the partisan gap in death rates increased significantly after vaccines were introduced.

There had been previous studies that analyzed Covid death rates by county, then compared those with how the county had voted in the 2016 election. These found a correlation between counties that voted for Trump and ones that had a high Covid death rate. However, as the article points out, there might be other factors that account for the high death rate, such as availability of health care or average household size.

This study took a different approach. The researchers matched every death in the two states to the party registration of the person in 2017. They then used deaths data from previous years to “predict” the numbers of people who would have died – absent the pandemic - broken down by age, time of year, party affiliation and location. By comparing actual deaths in each category with the expected number, they could determine “excess deaths” – those that were probably due to the pandemic. To quote the article,

 When the researchers looked at excess deaths before and after the pandemic, the results were sobering. Tragically, but not surprisingly, both Republicans and Democrats experienced a sudden uptick in mortality during the first year of the pandemic. While excess death rates were slightly higher among Republicans than Democrats, “both are dying at really high rates over this period,” Goldsmith-Pinkham says.

The fates of Republicans and Democrats began to diverge markedly after the introduction of vaccines in April of 2021. Between March 2020 and March 2021, excess death rates for Republicans were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats. After April 2021, the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points.

So, while the likelihood of both Republicans and Democrats experiencing excess deaths during the first year of the pandemic was almost equally high, Republican excess deaths in those two states (which are of course probably representative of a number of red states) were more than ten percent higher than Democratic excess deaths after April 2021, which was around when vaccines became freely available (I got my second dose on April 1, 2021).

Of course, the reason for this is no surprise. Given the widespread questioning of (and outright opposition to) vaccines by both the right-wing media and GOP politicians (almost all of whom were themselves vaccinated, to be sure; they ain’t no fools), it was almost inevitable that a lot of people who listened to them actually took their advice.

Actually, this study is very helpful at this particular time when the Republicans are wondering, after losing or underperforming in three national elections in a row, if perhaps they need to rethink their strategy. I think that’s an excellent idea. In fact, here’s what I think should be their first principle: If you want to win more elections, don’t kill your own voters.

It’s worth a try, anyway.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, December 4.

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,106,860

Average daily deaths last seven days: 295

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 304

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 100,863,106          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 369,014 (52,716/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 284,991 (40,713/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.4% (0.3% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

The Chinese government may finally be coming to its senses and rethinking its Zero Covid policy. While that made sense in Wuhan in January 2020, it ceased to make sense when much more transmissible variants had replaced the original one, and completely eradicating the virus became impossible. Now the Chinese population has clearly decided that the massive disruptions to their lives caused by lockdowns are unacceptable, even compared to the risk of more illness and deaths.

Other countries tried Zero Covid, too, and backed off it – although also only after causing a lot of suffering that was ultimately for naught. I’m thinking of Vietnam, where my wife has been for the last three years, after she went there to care for her father while her mother was in the hospital, then got caught there when Covid broke out worldwide.

She’s still in Vietnam because USCIS, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the facts that her father was dying and the pandemic was still raging in Vietnam didn’t justify her inability to come back for a mandatory interview on renewal of her green card. Rather than postpone the interview as her lawyer requested, they cancelled the renewal process with no possibility of appeal, leaving her unable to return to the US legally. I’m now pursuing an application for Humanitarian Parole to at least get her back in the US, so she can go before an immigration judge, who will hopefully talk some sense into USCIS.

Like China (and other Asian countries like Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Japan), Vietnam’s initial response to the pandemic, including locking down areas when there was just one instance of transmission of the virus, was very successful. Up until at least March of 2021, there had been only 35 Covid deaths in Vietnam since the beginning of the pandemic.

But then the Delta variant hit in April 2021, and Vietnam’s deaths numbers quickly went into the tens of thousands (the number is now at 43,000, which is a lot more than 35. But per capita, it’s still light years ahead of the US level of deaths). So, in some areas – one of which is where my wife lives – total lockdowns were imposed. In her area, that lockdown lasted 15 months. Nobody could leave their house, period. My wife once got fined $500 for taking the 15-minute walk to her parents’ house.

But one experience she had really brought home to me how destructive a lockdown could be. A friend of hers, who is a single mom of a 6-year-old girl, caught Covid and had to go into mandatory quarantine (at a sparse government-run facility where she had to pay $50 a day for the privilege of being incarcerated. $50 is more than the average Vietnamese person earns in a week). She had to go immediately – the police came to her house and drove her to the facility.

But here’s the kicker: They were in such a hurry to take her away, that they wouldn’t even let her make any provisions for her daughter while she was gone. So, this poor little girl was left alone in her house. When my wife heard about this from her friend, she immediately contacted the police to ask if she could go to the house – which is just about two miles from where my wife lives – to pick up the girl and bring her back to stay with her until her mother was out of quarantine.

However, she was refused. And if she’d tried to go pick the girl up, she would have been fined and perhaps jailed, since this would be her second offense. The bottom line: The girl would have been in the house by herself for the entire time that her mother was in quarantine (which turned out to be around ten days, if memory serves me well), had Bich not been able to find a neighbor who was willing to walk over at night and bring the girl to her house – and she would have also been fined if she’d been caught.

But that didn’t happen until the girl had been in the house by herself for five or six days! Who is making the calculation that it’s better to leave a 6-year-old girl by herself for potentially a full 14-day quarantine period, than it is to allow her mother to take the girl to live with somebody else while she’s gone, before she gets dragged away into quarantine?

And that’s the problem with the Zero Covid policy: it imposes risks on people that in many cases far outweigh the Covid risk itself. It took the deaths of about ten people in an apartment building in Urumqi to bring that message home in China. And it might well have taken the death of a six-year-old girl to do the same in Vietnam.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, November 27.