Coronavirus, Week 103: 1 million dead, or 20

Yes, as of late last week, that's the quasi-official and surely undercounted, probably highly undercounted, US death toll from COVID-19.

President Joe Biden, who claimed that sombody as COVID incompetent as his predecessor, Donald Trump, should be voted out office for that reason alone, has continued to dodge eating his words with many of the BlueAnon faithful by dodging the tough issues.

Hospitalizations instead of cases the new metric.

Talking about getting closer to endemic, and even trotting out St. Anthony of Fauci to push that message, even as the latest variant in Europe may hit our shores.

Cutting back on public testing. Hey, those free at home test kits are great to try to calm some of the worried public, and for taking privately generated positive test results out of the public sphere.

That's even as money gets tighter for antivirals and other issues, and Biden's failure last fall to have multiple arrows in his quiver is another issue.

That's as we have one of the highest death/case rates of any country in the world. (There are some countries, like India and China, whose numbers I don't trust on government principle.)

But, carry on.

You do have health insurance, don't you? And, with a low deductible?

We may indeed get to endemic. But, with a US having 3 times the population of 1920, and interconnected much more with a global population 4 times that of a century ago, it will take a lot longer than it did with the Spanish flu. And, "endemic" won't look the same.

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Meanwhile, as you read this, China has its financial capital and largest metro, Shanghai, in the middle of a two-part lockdown. China, even with its swifter, yet more draconian, true lockdowns than anything in Western Europe, and true lockdowns (which the US never really had, shut up COVID contrarians), has long been trying to avoid this. The Beeb piece cites China's zero-COVID policy (which the US has never had, shut up, COVID contrarians, Great Barrington crack smokers, etc.) is considered by some within to be overblown against Omicron and may even be getting pushback. Alert the Xi Jinping Thought Kool-aid peddlers that the Maximum Leader is being questioned.

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Per the header, and the latter number? That's the likely global mortality from COVID. And, the excess mortality method shows that Asia didn't deal as well with COVID as some claim. Alerting the Xi Jinping Thought Kool-aid peddlers.