WHAT WAS THE ECONOMIC COST OF THE COVID PANDEMIC?

Some weekly Worldometer info on COVID-19:

Deaths over the past 7 days.

World 1913
#1 Brazil 243
#2 Germany 223
#3 USA 209
#4 Russia 183
#5 France 155

Deaths in the past 7 days per million population.

World 0.24
#1 New Zealand 11
#2 Hong Kong 11
#3 Martinique 5
#4 Greece 4
#5 Denmark 4
#11 S. Korea 2
#17 Brazil 1
#23 USA 0.9

Worried about long covid? At one time as high as one-third of people who got infected were suspected of suffering this symptomatic fallout. However, a recent study seems to show that only 10% now suffer from this ailment. Part of the reason is that the subvariants from Omicron to the present are not as troublesome.

Now that the pandemic has been declared over, what was the cost of covid? Seems like an uncalculable task, but Jakub Hlávaka (top photo) and Adam Rose of CREATE (University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergency) made an attempt.

First, they only analyzed the effect on the USA.
They said the cost will reach $14 trillion by the end of the year.

From 2020 to what it will be at the end of this year, the net economic output of our country will be $103 trillion.
However, without the pandemic, it would have been around $117 trillion.
Thus, simple subtraction gives you $14 trillion.

The greatest loss stemmed from workplace absences and lost sales.
Take direct health care expenses.

During the pandemic, hospitalization amounted to $214 billion.
Normally, 65,000 Americans would have died from January 2020 to June 2022. This cost should have been only $20 billion.

At the height of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020:

Air travel had fallen by nearly 60%.
Indoor dining by 65%.
In-store shopping by 29%.

Of course, these losses were offset by online purchases, government stimulus and working from home.

This pandemic period was unprecedented.

The toll was twice that of the Great Recession of 2008 (December 2007 to June 2009).
20 times that of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks.
40 times that of any other disaster since this century began.

The analysis was limited to the pandemic's standard economic effects. If they had included the vast array of indirect costs, such as lost years of work because of premature deaths and long COVID, mental health effects and student learning loss, the cost would have been much higher.

Look's like this debt crisis is entering a dangerous stage because the House of Representatives has gone home for the Memorial Day weekend, and June 1 is the supposedly the doom day. Something from Mike Lukovich that well explains what might be happening.

If you've been keeping up with Super Typhoon Mawar, it yesterday only brushed Guam as a Category 4, creating considerable havoc. In the open ocean, it is back to being a Super Typhoon, strengthening at this writing to 175 MPH! This makes Mawar the strongest typhoon in this region since Typhoon Damrey in 2000. Guam is home to 168,000 people, including more than 20,000 U.S. military personnel and dependents.

Looks like there will be some weakening as Mawar heads for Taiwan, and further good news, the latest projection has a turn to the north, then slightly northeast, away from Okinawa. Then what? We'll see.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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