by Ross Thrasher
OMG, global pandemic numbers have topped 500,000 in three of the past four days. This is unprecedented territory. For the month of October the worldwide totals are 13M new cases and 200K deaths (both one-month records). This brings the overall COVID caseload to 46 million and the fatalities to 1.2 million. Infection data are worse than ever in Europe and the USA.
France’s recent case count is astonishing — more than 40,000 for several days. The United Kingdom has been over 20,000 daily for the past fortnight. Spain, Italy and Belgium have just set all-time records in single-day positives (20,000+). Russia has tracked above 15,000/day since mid-October. Germany, the paragon of Western Europe during the first wave, cleared 18,000 cases the other day. The list goes on and on: Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Austria are all spiking at heretofore unmatched levels. Europe currently accounts for nearly half of the world’s new pandemic infections.
Without COVID-19, US President Trump would probably have had an easy path to re-election in 2020. But the coronavirus has unclothed the would-be emperor. His heedless campaign rallies have been super-spreader events. More than 40 states are seeing rising numbers of cases and hospitalizations. On October 30 the United States set a single-day record for new cases with 101,461, and daily COVID fatalities have hovered around 1000 for the past week. The US cumulative tally is 9.4 million positives and 236,000 deceased, still 20% of the planetary aggregates.
Mercifully the pandemic numbers for Latin America has tapered off somewhat in recent weeks, down to 10% of the global totals. India is holding in the 40-50,000 daily new-case range. The remaining 10% of coronavirus infections are scattered around the globe.
A dark winter is forecast by the Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation — a doubling of pandemic deaths to 2.5 million in the next three months. Universal mask wearing could save half a million of these lives. The current US compliance rate is only 65%. Will regime change make a difference in America?
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