President Biden’s first joint address – India in crisis – Brazil’s death toll – Evening statistics
Biden’s first joint address to Congress yesterday presented quite a contrast to those of his predecessor. To begin with, there are usually about 1400 people in attendance on such occasions, whereas yesterday only about 200 appeared in person. Nearly everyone in Congress has been vaccinated, but many are still shunning crowds of people indoors, as indeed the CDC recommends even vaccinated persons to do. Those who attended had to provide proof of being tested within the previous 48 hours. Masks were de rigueur; those who have made a point of discarding them in recent days, such as Ted Cruz or Lauren Boebart, wore them on this occasion. The Capitol remains a fortress, with the roads to it blocked off for a half-mile in any direction.
And then of course Biden himself is soft-spoken and uses none of the incendiary rhetoric to which we’ve become accustomed to hearing for the past four years. He is, truthfully, a rather dull speaker; but at any rate he is neither boorish nor vitriolic. The lack of dramatic highlights means that there is little chance of any part of the speech going viral, except, possibly, that of Ted Cruz enjoying a refreshing slumber during the middle of it. A blissful smile hovered upon his rosy lips during this interval, which perhaps signifies that he was enjoying dreams about vacationing in Cancun.
India is receiving about $100 million in coronavirus supplies (oxygen materials, personal protection equipment, vaccine manufacturing supplies, test kits, etc.) as the pandemic continues to spiral. Only 8% of the population has received a single dose of the vaccine, and the case rate continues to expand at well over 350,000 per day. Fauci has gone on record as stating that India’s problem is a global issue. If the COVID virus is allowed to run its course there unchecked, the variants developed under these conditions could spread to other countries. In several cases the vaccines are less effective against the variants than they are against the original virus, meaning that the variants could undo all of the good that the vaccines are doing if they are disseminated to other nations. Officially India has reported about 150 deaths per million, while Brazil and the United States reported figures of approximately 1,900 and 1,800 respectively. But medical experts believe that India’s true COVID numbers may be five to ten times greater than the official tally.
In India, at least, the government is willing to admit that it has miscalculated on occasion and is not too proud to accept aid from other sources. In Brazil the government remains in self-denial. A mere 13% of its populace has received a single dose of the vaccine and the country has already endured more than 400,000 deaths, the second-highest in the world. Our own death toll is the highest; but the actual proportion of deaths in Brazil is higher than ours, since it has only two-thirds of our population. Bolsonaro continues to insist that the country must get back to business as usual, arguing that the economic hardship for Brazilians is equally as bad as the pandemic itself. He overlooks the fact that the countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, and China that imposed the most rigorous lockdowns in the early stages of the pandemic have had significantly lower death tolls and smaller economic contractions. Brazil’s gross domestic product contracted 4.1% in 2020, the biggest annual recession since 1996. Bolsonaro has also consistently undermined mayors and state governors when they tried to impose their own lockdowns, social distancing rules, or mask mandates. His motives are not merely the result of self-delusion. In the midst of the pandemic he has initiated, virtually unnoticed, a series of mandates that remove protections for labor and the environment, while opening up indigenous lands for exploitative agriculture and mining.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 151,095,600; # of deaths worldwide: 3,178,095; # of cases U.S.: 33,041,964; # of deaths; U.S.: 589,181.