I spent the past few weeks feeling annoyed that everyone I know here in the NY/NJ area (and a lot of people I know in CA) were able to get appointments for vaccine shots well before I did. In the meantime though, global COVID cases just hit weekly records…
Jinshan Hong at Bloomberg:
The worrisome trend, just days after the world surpassed 3 million deaths, comes as countries are rolling out vaccinations in an effort to get the virus under control. The data from Johns Hopkins University showing a 12% increase in infections from a week earlier casts doubt on the hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight.
The weekly increase surpassed the previous high set in mid-December. While infection rates have largely slowed in the U.S. and U.K., countries in the developing world – India and Brazil in particular – are shouldering surging caseloads.
I’m glad parts of the world are figuring out the vaccine situation and starting to get back to some kind of normal, but overall we are nowhere near done with this thing.