The Pandemic Blog

I am sorry I once again went two weeks without posting, but it turns out that there was definitely a benefit to doing so: I now realize that the week before last (the week starting August 15) was The Week from Hell. On steroids, no less. In that week, 10,714 people in the US died of Covid-19 (which equals 1,531 a day), a level last seen on March 7, as we were coming down from the disastrous (and completely unnecessary) third wave - which I hereby christen the Donald Trump/Kristi Noem (for Sturgis) Memorial Wave. This compared to 4,445 deaths (635 a day) during the week of August 8, so this means that weekly deaths were up more than 100% during the week of August 15. Of course, if this trend had continued, we would have been in April 2020 territory very soon, and it would be time to order a big shipment of refrigerator trucks (beyond the ones that Texas ordered about a month ago – who dares say that Greg Abbott isn’t always thinking ahead to what the people of Texas are going to need?

Vietnam (where my wife has been since before the pandemic began) is going through hell nowadays. I often liked to brag about the fact that, until less than 3 months ago, the country had experienced only 35 Covid deaths and fewer than 2,000 total cases during the entire pandemic. However, that changed drastically with the Delta variant. Here’s the current situation: ·         They’re at about 275,000 total cases as of yesterday, with 5,774 total deaths – although there are persistent reports that this is a vast undercount. I find those reports hard to believe, but even these numbers are bad enough (VN has 93 million people, a little more than ¼ the size of the US population). ·         The country is totally locked down. All stores are closed – the only way you can get food is by ordering it. Food prices are about triple what they were before, and there are lots of shortabes. In many parts of the country, if you can’t afford the new food prices, well…may God help you. ·