Is England’s Freedom Day the model for living with Covid?
The writer of this piece asks: How long can governments enforce or mandate Covid-related restrictions in a scenario in which the coronavirus refuses to go away? Now the United Kingdom has shifted away from this model, ending all legal curbs including on mask-wearing and social distancing, but at the same time cautioned that pandemic is far from over and people must behave responsibly. The bottom-up self-regulation might become the norm in the next phase of the pandemic as more and more people get vaccinated, for one, and the second, get sick of never-ending curbs. However, there are downsides to that model too. In the current pandemic, the unpredictable virus has caught the world off guard far too easily and far too often. The relevant facts are far from clear. You will never know who is going to put you at risk if someone is an asymptomatic carrier and vice-versa. The writer argues: For now, other countries should do no more than watch the vast epidemiological experiment being conducted in England. Read here
Let's look at the global statistics
Global infections: 194,729,113
Global deaths: 4,167,758
Vaccine doses administered: 3,885,631,232
Nations with most cases: US (34,533,187), India (31,440,951), Brazil (19,707,662), Russia (6,071,893), France (6,061,802).
Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center ()
Virus cases in Tokyo leap to record of over 3,000, reports say
Daily coronavirus infections in Tokyo were set to surge to a record of more than 3,000 on Tuesday, several media outlets reported, even as the Japanese capital hosts tens of thousands of people for the Olympics. The figure, set to be officially announced later in the day, eclipses a previous record of 2,520 set in January. Experts had earlier expressed fears that Tokyo infections could reach their worst-ever levels during the games, due to the spread of the delta variant. Only about a quarter of Japan’s population is fully vaccinated. Read here
How tech won the pandemic and now may never lose
Even as 609,000 Americans and many more outside have died due to the coronavirus and the Delta variant surges, as corporate bankruptcies hit a peak for the decade, as restaurants, airlines, gyms, conferences, museums, department stores, hotels, movie theaters and amusement parks shut down and as millions of workers found themselves unemployed, the tech industry flourished. The combined stock market valuation of Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook increased by about 70 percent to more than $10 trillion. That is roughly the size of the entire US stock market in 2002. Read here
Bhutan’s rapid Covid vaccine rollout hailed as international success story
Bhutan has inoculated most of its eligible population with second doses of Covid-19 vaccinations in a week, in a speedy rollout hailed by UNICEF as a “success story” for international donations. More than 454,000 shots were administered over the past week in the remote Himalayan kingdom – more than 85 per cent of the eligible adult population of about 530,000 – after a recent flood of foreign donations. The country’s rapid rollout of jabs stands in contrast with other south Asian nations, which have been hit by India’s suspension of vaccine exports. Read here
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