COVID-19 (Global) – 2021/12/27

A few weeks ago not a single country (on the list of 48 that I follow daily) had a rise in their infection rates. This past week the scene changed. The world had a new peak of daily infections on 23 December (1,005,692 – for the first time ever more than 1 million cases per day) and fourteen other countries also reached new peaks. Globally the daily number of new infections rose by almost 100,000 and in the USA it went up by 65,000 per day while in the UK it increased by 28,000. In Europe, France had an increase of 18,000 while Spain reported 24,000 more cases per day than a week ago.

Four countries, Spain (1,058), France (1,073), the UK (1,560) and Denmark (2,031) now have more than 1,000 new cases per million per day.

On the positive side, the death rates are still relatively low with only two countries, Denmark and Finland, reporting new peaks in their number of deaths on one day.

In the USA it was reported that the COVID-19 pandemic caused the steepest decline in life expectancy in the country since WW II at 77 years in 2020 as compared to 79 years in 2019. According to the article in Forbes, COVID-19 was the third largest cause of death among children aged 1 to 4. Only heart disease and cancer caused more deaths in 2020 than COVID. You can read the Forbes article here:
https://www.forbes.com/…/pandemic-caused-steepest…/…

More than three months ago I remarked that diabetes was like a double-edged sword. I wrote then: “Diabetes increased the risk of severe COVID or even death, but at the same time COVID also often starts or worsens diabetes, even in people who have had no sign of diabetes before getting COVID-19.” In the Forbes article above it is said that it was not only COVID that resulted in the lower life expectancy, but that diabetes deaths had exceeded 100,000 for the first time. If you want to refer back to what I wrote in my own update, you can find it here:
https://missionissues.wordpress.com/…/covid-19-smaller…/

In the USA more than 900 flights per day had to be cancelled over Christmas as pilots and crew members called in sick due to COVID. One can only imagine the chaos at airports with passengers wanting to reach their destinations on time. Here is a CBC news report:
https://www.cbc.ca/…/christmas-day-flights-cancelled…

Lastly, I recently read an eye-opener in South Africa’s Daily Maverick. I’ve long maintained that the experience South Africa had obtained through HIV and AIDS helped the country to a great extent in handling the COVID pandemic. But Nicoli Nastrass writes in her article that the AIDS denialists (for which South Africa was known in the time of President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang) also teaches us something about the anti-vax conspiracy theorists. According to her research, the anti-vax misinformation campaign is driven primarily by twelve individuals of whom almost all work in the field of alternative medicine (much the same as during the Tshabalala-Msimang time). I’m not going to try and summarise the entire article, but it is worthwhile reading it and taking note of the lessons learnt from the AIDS pandemic:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/…/2021-09-15-the…/…