10 million deaths

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

Interesting analysis from the Economist. Their modelling suggests 10m dead globally so far. Three times the official numbers.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/05/15/there-have-been-7m-13m-excess-deaths-worldwide-during-the-pandemic?utmcampaign=the-economist-this-week&utmmmedium=newsletter&utmsource=salesforce-marketing-cloud

The UK has a lower excess death count than Covid count because lockdown saved lives normally lost to other causes (flu, road accidents etc).

It looks like The US has underestimated, which I had been wondering about.

But the horror show is the poorer countries where the death toll has been massive but missed.

This really puts things in perspective, we need to vaccinate the world.

No idea how though. Production capacity currently means it would take years to make enough.

We should be sharing our vaccines with poorer countries as an absolute priority instead of vaccinating the young who are highly unlikely to die from this.

Absolutely @savethegrannies

People want the vaccine so they can go on holiday. (I'm guilty of thinking like that). But giving it to healthy young people here instead of the old or at risk elsewhere isn't right.

This helps to put things in to perspective. How privileged we are to be living on this section of the globe.

It's not just about sharing vaccines, though. It's snug infrastructure. There's no point in us kindly sending vaccines to countries that have no infrastructure to ensure they are distributed correctly and fairly.

Maybe there should be a UN vaccine style campaign to poorer countries? I’d happily go over and vaccinate people for a few months.

There are reports of Indian crematorium being full with 200 bodies a day, in regions with official deaths at 5 a day.

If that's even close to true and vaccines aren't rolled out the death rate by the end of this could be Spanish flu levels