The Pandemic Blog

For a great account of what’s going on in India, read this WaPo article. And read this Atlantic article for a good commentary on how India’s wealthier class ignored the lessons of the 1984 Bhopal disaster and let the health care system stagnate, leaving the country unable to handle this sudden surge in the virus. Although it's wrong to say the system stagnated. For the wealthy, it became (and remains) world-class. Does this remind you of another health care system that, at least in the early days of the pandemic, was overwhelmed?  Both articles call attention to the Modi government’s failures, but they both try to spread the blame around. Yes, others are responsible, but the fact that – after a terrible response to the first wave of the virus – the government got lulled into thinking they’d beaten it, so they could open up completely (including holding big political rallies and allowing the annual Kumbh Mela to take place – this year in Haridwar, which I’ve visited and can ...

My fears a couple weeks ago that the US was in a new Covid wave were probably wrong – or at least premature. Not only has the growth rate in new infections for the US turned down again. The seven-day growth rate in new infections was 1.6% two weeks ago, but is down to 1.2% now. This matches the pandemic-low rate for the week ending March 14. On the other hand, at over 57,000 new cases every day, the US is hardly doing great – especially when you compare it to Taiwan, where they’ve had 1,100 cases so far in the pandemic , in a country a little less than 1/10 the size of the US, population-wise. A similar story can be told for deaths. Last week’s 7-day growth rate in total deaths was 0.9%, a pandemic record low. But there’s another “hand” here, too: average daily deaths last week were 726. That number was 4,000 in early February, so it’s an improvement over that. But when you consider that Taiwan has had seven deaths in the entire pandemic, it shows we can do much better, especially gi...

The NY Times has done a great investigation of how ICE completely mishandled Covid, and increased its spread among the general population, especially in the border areas. Note the picture of staff members firing chemical agents and pepper spray at residents of one detention facility in April 2020, because the residents had the temerity to demonstrate for better controls against infection. Trump’s own campaign decided he lost the election because of his handling of Covid. Of course, his answer to that is clear: He didn’t lose the election. We’re so lucky to be rid of him. No matter what he says, he isn’t even going to run in 2024, let alone win. I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com .  

For the first time in the pandemic, daily new cases aren’t really going up or down – they’re staying at the same level. On NPR this morning, Dr. Ashish Jha described this as the result of two counteracting forces: the broadening rollout of vaccines and the new variants causing a rapid rise in cases among the unvaccinated (and especially the unvaccinated who are acting as if they’re vaccinated and can get on with their normal lives). But the real message is this: If unvaccinated people were still taking proper precautions, new cases would be at a much lower level than they are now, and would still be falling. However, at least we can be thankful we’re not India or Brazil . Both of these countries are paying the price for mismanagement of the crisis, although Bolsonaro has to win the prize as the leader who’s most tirelessly worked to put his country in the lead for daily deaths – and he’s achieved that goal in spectacular fashion (although Brazil’s total deaths so far are still a c...

There’s no question that we’re in a fourth wave. Hopefully, this will be nowhere near as bad as the previous three, but there’s no guarantee of that, either. Both new cases and deaths jumped sharply in the past week, as did their 7-day growth rates. Given what’s going on in Michigan now, as well as other states, this shouldn’t be a big surprise to anybody. If you want to compare these numbers to last week's, go to this  post. The numbers These numbers are calculated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for April 11. Month Deaths reported during month Avg. deaths per day during period Deaths as percentage of previous month’s Month of March 2020 4,058 131   Month of April 59,812 1,994 1,474% Month of May 42,327 1,365 71% Month of June 23,925 798 57% ...