TEN HAPPIEST COUNTRIES

 I'll get to more COVID-19 details tomorrow, but here is something from the AP:

German Man Caught Trying to Get 90th COVID-19 Shot

A 60-year-old man was caught at a vaccination center in Eilenburg in Saxony after trying to get jabbed for the second day in a row. The man, who was carrying several blank vaccination cards, allegedly received around 90 shots at vaccination centers across the state over a period of months. Police say he has been selling forged vaccination cards with real vaccine batch numbers to anti-vaxxers who crave the Covid passports that make access to public life in Germany much easier. It was not immediately clear what impact the 90 jabs — from different brands — had on the man’s health. (Source: AP)

On a slightly more serious note, China has totally locked down its largest city of Shanghai of 26 million.

• The country has jumped to 13,000 new cases, but this compares to 19K in the USA and 127K in South Korea, which is continuing to remove restrictions.  China, with one-tenth the number of cases than South Korea is going berserk over Shanghai.  Why ?
• Of those 13,000 new cases, 9,000 are in Shanghai, and they are testing everyone.  
• A particularly interesting result is that nearly 12,000 of those 13,000 were asymptomatic.  
• Maybe COVID-19 has been so devastating because more than 90% of cases are asymptomatic.  Those carrying this virus just did not realize they were infecting others.  After all, who bothers to take a COVID test if they feel healthy?
• If this asymptomatic rate is 90%, instead of the World suffering from 492,482,216 cases, the number should be nearly 5 billion.  The world population is close to 8 billion.
• Some day, an antigen test to determine the true percentage of asymptomaticity will reveal the truth.
• The Chinese government has sent 40,000 personnel to Shanghai from other regions to help out.
• This shutdown is costing the country at least $46 billion/month, or 3% of the GDP.

Total number of COVID-19 deaths from Worldometer in millions (in parentheses, deaths/million population):

• World     6.2 (782)
• USA       1.0 (3019)
• Brazil     0.7 (3071)
• India      0.5  (371)
• Russia    0.4 (2534)
•  
• China    0.004 (3)

Well, on to my topic of the day, Conde Nast Traveler on 31March2022 featured the ten happiest countries in the world.  You've seen lists of this type before.  Features generally cold spots.  #10 is New Zealand.  However the write-up starts with:

New Zealand has had one of the lowest rates of COVID-related deaths during the pandemic, cementing its spot in the top ten.

While that statement is generally accurate, as their deaths/million rate is only 73, today the country is besieged with new cases.  

• Up to 10,248 yesterday, or 2050 new cases/million.
• The USA, for example, was yesterday at 57 new cases/million.  
• Sure, South Korea was recently way up there above 5000 new cases/million, although yesterday that was down to around 2500 new cases/million, and even neighbor Australia was at 1800 new cases/million yesterday, so they are in good company.  These are countries, like China, that somehow escaped the early wrath of this pandemic, but the Omicron subvariants have struck.
• China is panicking at only 7 new cases/million, and for good reason, for they have so many vulnerable potential victims.  Further:
• China's vaccines are somewhat low in effectiveness compared to the ones used in the U.S.  
• Singapore data showed that people getting Sinovac and Sinopharm shots died at almost twice the rate of Pfizer and Moderna inoculations. 

I might add that the Conde Nast Traveler statement about low death rates is still accurate, for new Omicron cases only bring relatively mild symptoms, and that typical 10,000 new cases daily rate only results in 15 deaths/day, or for New Zealand, 3 deaths/day/million.  The reason why the mortality rate remains low is mostly because of vaccinations.  The U.S. yesterday was down to 0.5 deaths/day/million.

So back to the happiest countries, mentioned is the tenth World Happiness Report, which was just released.  Here are the rankings:

#1      Finland

#2      Denmark

#3      Switzerland

#4      Iceland

#5      Netherlands

#6      Norway

#7      Sweden

#8      Luxembourg

#9      New Zealand

#10    Austria

#11    Australia

#12    Israel

#13    Germany

#19    USA

#55    Japan

#74    Russia

#101  South Africa

#108  Ukraine

#146  Afghanistan

The Conde Nast top ten happiest countries ranking was almost identical, with only Israel breaking into the top ten:

#10  New Zealand

#  9  Israel

#  8  Norway

#  7  Sweden

#  6  Luxembourg

#  5  Netherlands

#  4  Switzerland

#  3  Iceland

#  2  Denmark

#  1  Finland:  Fifth year in a row as #1.  Winter swimming is extremely popular.  Supposedly, they get a surge of serotonin and dopamine.

Well, anyway, I wouldn't want to live in cold weather, so the above is almost meaningless for me.  I made it to Finland a dozen years ago.   Had dinner at YUME, a Japanese restaurant.  The chef was Ryan Shibuya from Pearl City, Honolulu, here to the right with his Finnish wife Satu.  My final thoughts from Helsinki:

2. It is possible for your face to instantly go numb when you suddenly walk into a gust and the wind chill factor is minus 25C. If I were to live here for any length of time, I would purchase one of those helmets worn by luge competitors. The plastic covering your face and overall protection of your ears should work. Then, if you slip on an invisible layer of ice, there will be protection when your head hits the pavement.

7. I'll have fond memories of Helsinki, for it is here, after my fourth Olympic city (Seoul, Barcelona, Munich) of this trip, where it occurred to me that the only hope Hawaii has to overcome what some are predicting to be a terrible economic future, is to host Hawaii Sustainable Expo 2020: Visions for Blue Planet Earth. We need to transcend current attitudes and transform our thinking.

9. Chez Dominique might well have served the best meal of my life. See below.  That's me having dinner a dozen years ago.

But about Israel...why are they so happy?  And this "condition" has been around for a long time.  A decade ago, it ranked #14 in the World Happiness report, and yNet tried to explain why:

How can the Jews be happy when Iran is going nuclear and threatening to wipe them off the map? How can they be happy when the Arabs are firing rockets every day at civilians in Ashkelon, Beersheba, Ashdod and Sderot? What are the sources of the happiness of the only UN member condemned to death and boycotted all over the world?

So why?

Israelis, which have one of the longest life expectancies of any nation in the world, are happy because their country has a history of scintillating enlightenment, with the highest production of scientific publications per capita in the world, more museums per capita and the highest worldwide publication of new books. In a war-ravaged country like Israel, the past few years saw five Israeli Nobel Prize winners. 

Another reason is economic success. No other industrialized country does it better, especially for a nation that doesn’t have natural resources and has a population roughly half of Belgium’s. Israel’s high-tech industry is flourishing, making the country known as “start-up nation.”

Four years ago Israel ranked #11.  Haaretz, Israel's leading newspaper, headlined:  Low Income, High Prices and Wars:  So Why is Israel One of the Happiest Countries in the World?

Israel’s good showing was not a one-off result and not an accident, and every year when the Happiness Report is released, it arouses a wave of reactions, generally of two types. One is shock, which resounds on the social networks: “Why exactly is everyone here so happy? After all, housing is expensive, security is awful, corruption reigns and everything is insufferable,” writes one Israeli.

The other, opposite viewpoint comes out in opinion pieces and blogs; it says all the alleged negative things are just a figment of the media’s imagination – and Israel really has a stable economy, long life expectancy, excellent health services and a solid social and family framework that gives the individual a feeling of security and belonging.

So when the United Nations published this 10th edition this year, here was the response from ISRAEL21c:

“I think it’s a mix of Israeli pride and optimism,” Fanti (a student of happiness) says.

In just the last year or two, there are many reasons for pride and optimism: Israel’s world-leading Covid vaccine program; the rise of the “unicorn nation”; a broad coalition government; and the Abraham Accords, among other accomplishments.

Furthermore, “Israelis have family and friend networks that makes us strong and mentally resilient. So even if we take into account our difficult life here, we are still much better off than other countries.”

Anytime any team can return from a 16-point deficit in a national championship game, it deserves some mention.  Yesterday, Kansas did so against North Carolina in the Superdome with 70,000 spectators.  This was the biggest comeback in NCAA Basketball Championship history!

Didn't mention anything about that Ukraine War, so here.

-