International COVID-19 Megathread

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First vaccinations took place in the UK this morning.

Margaret Keenan and William Shakespeare, freshly injected with the Bill Gates 5G nanochip, were later seen smashing up an Apple Store while chanting "MUST CRUSH CAPITALISM YAAARGH!".

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^^ Most Asian countries have more experience in dealing with virus diseases and pandemics. That said, I wouldn't put too much faith into official data from Vietnam or the PRC. These regimes are not known for their transparency, nor is free and indpendent reporting possible.

To be fair, Vietnam is a good deal freer than China, even if it's still a nasty dictatorship. There's some independent reporting allowed, as long as they don't attack the Party itself. Foreign journalists in Vietnam have been free to visit hospitals and interview doctors unaccompanied by minders, and they did report nothing out of the ordinary. Even in the most repressive dictatorships, the regime can't completely cover up mass deaths. So I'm inclined to believe Vietnam's official numbers are more credible than not.

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Happy one-year corona-versary, everyone!

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In Canada, the death count has been about 100 per day for the past two weeks. The Conservative Party are both griping about a vaccine rollout that is slower than the US, while its own caucus members have been tweeting anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories. Several politicians have been found to be on holiday in the Caribbean. By the end of today, about 85,000 Canadians will have been vaccinated.

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Canada has been entirely reliant on Belgium for its Pfizer vaccines, and Trudeau has said that the EU's export controls won't affect Canada's supply. He's been under criticism for not securing licenses to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine domestically, and made-in-Canada vaccines won't be available until the end of this year at the earliest.

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Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will NOT suspend the AstraZeneca vaccine, and that in fact, it will be recommended for 65+.

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The EMA has ruled that AstraZeneca is indeed safe and effective, and that there's no causal relationship with the blood clots. Many European countries are resuming its use.

Meanwhile, Biden is approving the export of 1.5 million AstraZeneca doses to Canada, and 2.5 million to Mexico.

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Meh, he should also approve to export them to the EU.

I definitely agree with the EMA ruling since there is not even stark evidence the side effects were caused by the vaccine itsself. And even if that was the case, the risk to die from Covid is far greater by not getting vaccinated. The major damage however is not the few days we lost, but the image problem AstraZeneca already had before due to poor communication.

Brazil is in a much more serious crisis right now, especially given its president who can't stop simping on Trump.

Quite frankly, the way the EU's leaders handled AstraZeneca is childish. First, they complained about slow delivery. Then, they made comments about its safety and efficacy. Then, they banned its export, before banning its administration. Finally, they relent.

Meanwhile, people across Europe and the entire world feel hesitant in taking AstraZeneca, just as more countries are ordering lockdowns again. Great job guys! They did more to promote vaccine hesitancy than Iran's Ayatollahs, the CCP, Trump, and QAnon.

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In happier news, Bhutan has administered the first dose of the Indian-made AstraZeneca vaccine to 36% of its population in just three days. That's by far the fastest pace of vaccination anywhere in the world.

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The first wave in India seems to have largely avoided the urban middle class, because they could afford to lockdown, but the slum-dwellers couldn't. That gave the impression in India's political elite and mainstream media that India as a whole went off lightly. But this wave shattered that illusion. There's no way that India's real death toll is less than a million by now. I can't imagine what happened in rural areas that lacked any modern infrastructure.

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Obviously the accuracy of stats reported and when/where the zenith of cases will appear can affect such a comparison, but over the past few days, the reported data doesn't suggest there is some mass number of deaths in India (yet) relative to the US.

US Population: 23.91% of India
US Deaths, Past 3 Days: 25.57% of India
US Cases, Past 3 Days: 14.49% of India

There is no way the official numbers are anywhere close to real. I'm in school with a number of folks from India and seemingly all of them have relatives and/or friends who have passed away in the last few weeks (AKA: it sounds like things are out of control).

Have we got anything like credible death figures from (for instance) Russia and Iran yet?

Russia's Deputy PM admitted in late December that the real death toll was 186,000, and not the official 57,000 at the time.

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4975

FT analyzed excess mortality in a wide range of countries, and it estimates that Russia's excess mortality as of December 31 was over 350k. That implies the death toll now is well over 400k.

https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938

The BBC claims to have obtained the "real" numbers in Iran, and they indicate the real death toll to be almost triple the official number. Extrapolated forward, that means Iran's current death toll is 200k+.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53598965

FT revealed a severe undercount in Mexico, Peru, and South Africa. Indonesia seems to have also massively undercounted its dead.

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Honestly, most people in rural areas in India* probably got off better than those in urban areas. People in rural areas are generally more active, less obese, and healthier than those in urban areas, even if they're somewhat poorer in material terms.

As for those people who got to critical condition though in rural areas (prob 2% definitely way lower than the percentage in America), they definitely had a lower rate of survival, though. For the elderly especially its incredibly horrid what's happening.

I think that actually only reason we hear about this wave is probably because it's actually affecting the urban middle class who are relatively unhealthy and have a much higher death rate compared to both the rural areas and the upper-class areas. If something happened in the rural areas there sadly wouldn't be much concern. It'd sweep through kill a few million people (which while tragic is a drop in the bucket) and nobody would notice otherwise.  

I could be wrong though.

Yes, the harsh environment in rural India would have meant there were few "high risk" people for COVID-19 to kill off, to begin with. It matches up with reports from Haiti, where the NGOs who run what health care exists, didn't see the mass deaths they were fearing.

The "vanilla" virus was a sniffles for maybe 99.9% of this population, and a horrible death for the remaining 0.1% (let's say 500 million infected * 0.1% = 500,000 deaths in rural India). A more virulent and lethal strain would cause a much more dramatic impact in wealthier cities where "high risk" persons could exist.

It will be a miracle if India could keep its real death toll below 2 million by now. A combination of harsh lockdown in cities + generous government support for the urban poor + an Indian version of Operation Warp Speed + rural areas already at herd immunity would mitigate further deaths. More probable is a death toll of 3-4 million, a per capita death rate at the level of Mexico or Russia.

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What's the betting they just double down on Zero Covid, yet again?

They've flipped to iron-fisted lockdowns to let-it-rip. We'll see how many millions will (actually, outside official numbers) die in the next few months.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-covid-update-12142022134038.html

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What I don't understand is why China's top priority was to avoid using the far more effective Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the West. The Draconian lockdown policy was driven in major part by the lack of effective vaccines being available. I bet Xi got a Pfizer/Moderna jab behind closed doors however.

Actually importing mRNA vaccines would have been an admission of failure in Xi's goal of making China a self-sufficient world leader in technology, just when it was most needed.

In reality, studies in countries where both Chinese-made vaccines and mRNA vaccines were used indicate that Chinese-made vaccines are effective against the Omicron strain, but three shots of these are required to provide equivalent protection as two shots of the mRNA vaccines. So, not importing mRNA vaccines isn't the biggest failure.

The biggest failure was a lack of urgency around vaccines. A police state is certainly capable of coercing vaccinations, but that was never done. It was only after Beijing announced the (de facto) end of the lockdowns did it then direct local authorities to prioritize vaccinating high-risk people. But it's already far too late to prevent a wave of mass deaths.

It was, indeed, an open secret that Party elites were being offered the Pfizer vaccine. I've heard that now they're available to the public in Beijing, but at a price of several hundred dollars. I wonder how hard the Party apparatchik grifting on that, kissed Xi's ass to get that job, however.

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Crematoriums in Beijing are working 24 hours a day. One crematorium normally receives 30-40 bodies per day, but recently has been receiving 200 per day. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the daily death toll in Beijing is about 1400, and we're not at the peak yet.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-crematoriums-death-surge-points-to-rising-covid-toll-in-china-11671219181

CAVEAT: the crematorium in question is one of several that's designated to handle you-know-what patients, so it's not necessarily representative of all of Beijing's crematoriums. But, the virus is spreading so quickly that it's certain that many people died without testing positive for you-know-what, so the death toll might be in the "mere" hundreds per day. That would still far exceed the death toll faced by New York and London in the dark days of Spring 2020.

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This is most certainly an underestimate -I think much more than a million will perish from COVID in China before it finally settles down there, given the huge virgin population, and how closely packed and urbanized they have become:

I don't think population density and urbanization has much, of any, factor on death toll. The rich East Asian countries are famous for their packed megacities, yet suffered the lowest excess mortality rates in the world. On the other hand, the parts of the US that have suffered the highest death tolls are sparsely-populated rural counties.

That would still be better than the United States per capita, mind.

Realistically, I think any excess mortality of less than 3 million would be a miracle at this stage.

The wealthy, democratic East Asian countries did everything right, both the government and the people. They took the virus seriously from the beginning. They kept infections to a minimum, but never imposed any broad-based lockdowns. These countries also have the best public health care systems in the world, and the highest per capital hospital and ICU capacity. A culture of mask-wearing during the flu season already existed. The best vaccines were imported, and vaccination rates were among the highest in the world. And still, they suffered an excess mortality rate of about 1 per 1000.

China falls well short of most of these factors, so to expect a comparable excess mortality rate (scaled up, at 1.4 million) is a complete fantasy.

An excess mortality rate of 2 per 1000 would put it on the level of France, or more comparable Thailand. Yet, even Thailand has a much more comprehensive public health care system than China, and didn't experience one single giant wave as China is seeing right now. Such an excess mortality rate would translate to 2.8 million excess deaths in China, which is within spitting distance of my 3 million benchmark. It would still be a miracle given what's unfolding in China at the moment.

An excess mortality rate of 3 per 1000 would be comparable to the UK, whose government leaders didn't even personally care about controlling infections. Adjusted to China, that would mean approximately 4 million excess deaths. China does enjoy a very high vaccination rate, even if the vaccines aren't so effective. It's just possible that grim benchmark can be avoided.

In short, logic tells me that we should expect maybe 3 to 4 million excess deaths. That's not particularly high by global standards, and they will definitely publish official numbers that insult the intelligence of even the dumbest idiots. But, it will be a huge blow to the Party's propaganda talking point that "we enjoy the world's lowest death toll thanks to the Party's glorious leadership".