NETFLIX PREVAILS

 The morning New York Times provided the following graphics:

To quote the NYT, slowly getting less terrible.  Note that hospitalizations come a week after the infection, and deaths another week later.  Thus, the decline in new deaths has not yet occurred...but should.

However, schools have just opened, people are packing football stadia and indoor entertainment is increasing.  I fear that new deaths will not drop much below 1000/day for the rest of the month or two and maybe more.

Here is a NYT article on world vaccinations you can actually read.   I'd swear the U.S. hit the 50% vaccination rate a month ago.  Well, we are seem stuck at 54% fully vaccinated.  If you glance at the full world table, we rank around #40.  The laggards in our country are the less educated and Republicans.  Another graph:

There are other countries with much lower vaccination rates, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation with the deaths/million people rate (right column):

    UAE              82%       207     

    China            72%           3

    Germany       63%     1112

    USA              54%     2075

      Mississippi   35%    3115

      Hawaii          57%     504

    South Korea   42%       47

    Russia            28%   1352

    New Zealand 22%          5

     Thailand        22%      218

     India              15%      319    

     Indonesia       17%     507

     South Africa   13%    1430

     Vietnam           7%      171

     Taiwan             6%       35

     Nigeria             1%       12

Some countries clearly don't report all their deaths, and some others don't need to be vaccinated because of strict government regulations that maintained a low infection rate.  No matter how you explain it, though, the U.S. is doing a terrible job of controlling this pandemic.  And we are continuing to open up because of the economy.

With its high transmissibility, if this Delta variant was the original COVID-19, our current 4.7 million world deaths would have been much higher.  Keep in mind that the Spanish Flu from 1918-1920 killed 50 million when the world population was less than a quarter of today.  Of course that number is controversial, and could  have been anything from 17.4 million to 100 million.  To the right, the right column for COVID-19 should today read 230 million cases, 4.7 million deaths and a mortality rate of 2%.  

When this pandemic ends the total number of COVID-19 cases could well approach that of the Spanish Flu.  But deaths/million will remain quite a bit lower.  Why?  Lower mortality rate of this coronavirus (the Spanish Flu was caused by a particular virulent H1N1 virus), better medical care today, vaccinations and maybe a difference in asymptomatic rate.  Medical researchers still have no clue on what this is today, with a rather dated article suggesting anything from 17% to 81%.

Oh, one benefit of this pandemic.  The seasonal flu number dropped to almost insignificance.  A graph of the U.S., Canada and Bermuda (?) from Scientific American:

Well, that was a lot more than I intended, but on to entertainment.  At the Emmys last night Netflix finally won the most statue battle.  The closest it came was 2018 when it tied HBO.  This year Netflix won 44 Emmy awards, beating out the combined total of #2 and #3, HBO/HBOMax.  What happened to CBS, ABC and NBC?

This new streaming cable system that has overtaken network TV has a flaw.  Never heard of Mare of Easttown and never saw Ted Lasso because they were on HBO Max and AppleTV+.  Interesting that in Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, four from Ted Lasso were nominated, and one still won, Brett Goldstein.  I don't dare add any more pay channels because I can't even keep up with Netflix and Prime.  Crown, the life of Queen Elizabeth II is on Netflix, but I avoid historical series.  It is into Season 4, with two more to come.

The Red Carpet?  Cosmopolitan said Taraji was stale:

Dan Levy deserved to be panned:

And Nicole Beyer must have loved how she looked:

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