And it ain’t over. And may never be. Definitely will never be for some people.
“A country grows or shrinks in three ways: immigration, deaths, and births. America’s declining fertility rate often gets the headline treatment. Journalists are obsessed with the question of why Americans aren’t having more babies. And because I’m a journalist, be assured that we’ll do the baby thing in a moment. But it’s the other two factors—death and immigration—that are overwhelmingly responsible for the collapse in U.S. population growth. …
“Excess deaths accounted for 50 percent of the difference in population growth from 2019 to 2021. That’s a clear sign of the devastating effect of the pandemic. But this statistic also tells us that even if we could had brought excess COVID deaths down to zero, U.S. population growth would still have crashed to something near an all-time low. To understand why, we have to talk about the second variable in the population equation: immigration.
“As recently as 2016, net immigration to the United States exceeded 1 million people. But immigration has since collapsed by about 75 percent, falling below 250,000 last year. Immigration fell by more than half in almost all of the hot spots for foreign-born migrants, including New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.”
“With a virus that spreads year-round, is capable of reinfection, and is still evolving rapidly, and with few public protections still in place, we could be facing a future where we all get sick several times a year. Covid may stay with us for the foreseeable future, not as a seasonal threat but as a regular companion.”
A complete list of all the countries in the world and their current Covid restrictions, from the New York Times.
In China or anywhere else.
So say the anti-vaxers in pooh-poohing the virus. But survival and recovery are two different things.
From NBC News: “The number of people worldwide who died because of the pandemic in its first two years may total more than 18 million, according to a sobering study released Thursday. That’s three times more than the reported global death toll from Covid-19, which crossed 6 million earlier this week.
“The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal The Lancet, analyzed data from 74 countries and 266 states and territories between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2021. The scientists calculated excess deaths, a measure of how many more people died than would be expected had the pandemic not occurred. That means the estimate accounts both for people killed by Covid directly — confirmed and undiagnosed cases — as well as those whose deaths may be indirectly attributed to the pandemic.
“Examples in the latter category include people with serious medical conditions who were unable to seek timely care because hospitals were overburdened, people who died by suicide, and those who died due to a lack of access to essential services.”
