041 The Erickson Report, Page 2: COVID deaths top five million

041 The Erickson Report, Page 2: COVID deaths top five million

But since no Good News can go unsullied, three days later, on November 11, AP reported that the global death toll from Covid-19, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, had passed 5 million, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but humbled wealthy ones.

For example, together the United States, the European Union, Britain, and Brazil, all upper-middle or high-income countries, account for just one-eighth of the world’s population - but nearly half of all reported deaths. The US alone has recorded over 740,000 dead, more than any other nation.

According to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the worldwide death toll rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950. Covid-19 is now the world's third leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke.

What's more, that total is almost certainly an undercount because of limited testing and people dying at home without medical attention, especially in poor parts of the world, such as India.

I suspect the grim reaper is not feeling so grim these days.

By the way, after what seemed like a tsunami of news accounts about breakthrough cases, where a vaccinated person tested positive for Covid, accounts which were used to attack the value of vaccines, recently released federal data sheds light on the matter.

What it comes down to is exactly what you should expect: Overall, fully vaccinated people had a far lower chance of testing positive for the virus or dying from it than the unvaccinated. All vaccinated age groups saw similar rates of breakthrough infection, and they all had much lower rates of infection and death compared with the unvaccinated in the same age groups.

As noted by Dr. David Dowdy, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, for any disease other than Covid, what everyone would be struck by is the dramatic difference between the unvaccinated and fully vaccinated.

But of course this is not any other disease, it's Covid, which is as much a political disease as a medical one.

Which leads me to end this segment with a wonderful comment from one Neil Truick:

For decades, it was "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service." Nobody said a word. They added "No Mask", and people lost their damn minds. For decades, it was "Cover your mouth when you cough." Again, nobody said a word. "Wear a mask" and it's grounds for insurrection. People fatigue me.

Me too, my brother.