I was encouraged over the weekend again about the relatively few Covid deaths, though mindful that those totals are always lower because of delayed reporting. Still, I thought it was a good sign given the continuing upsurge in number of cases. We have about 27M active cases at the moment, which seems incredible.
But as happened before, as the reporting comes in on the weekdays we are up to 3,000 deaths a day again. Worse than the last time I complained. That is against a background of a half-million new cases a day, yes. But it's also dead people. Pray that this variant confers more than a little natural immunity. As covid increases heart problems long-term even after people recover from it, our new normal is going to start including more heart-related deaths every year, which individually we will not be able to assign to covid.
I am seeing the story circulate again that the natural progression of virus mutations is that they become less deadly. Though there is some truth in the idea, that is not a true statement. For a quick example, the plagues that devastated Europe in the 6th C and 14th C (with powerful echoes both times over a few more centuries) were not some brand new disease descending from nowhere. They were mutations of the same virus that the Indo-Europeans brought thousands of years earlier, that seemed to spawn worse versions a couple of times every millennium. It has been around a long time. Sometimes the variants are much, much worse.
I do a lot of wishful thinking, but I try to hold it in check with information that I actually know.
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