COVID & UKRAINE

 FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE 

EXCERPT:

Today's US coronavirus / COVID-19 numbers in the US
From the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University

Confirmed US cases: 79,232,260
Confirmed US deaths: 957,633

I'm going to stop providing the COVID-19 vaccination, case, hospitalization, and death counts in the US for the time being. The vaccination rate is stubbornly steady as nearly 1/4 of Americans either cannot get a vaccine for health reasons, or callously refuse.

The good news is that the other metrics are declining significantly, although I am mindful that very soon this country is going to reach the shameful milestones of 80 million infected and 1 million dead.

Hong Kong is a cautionary tale for all of us. After two years of the city being nearly COVID-free, thanks to strict and lengthy hotel quarantines for residents entering the city, intense contact-tracing, and the isolation of anybody who was in close contact with a person diagnosed with COVID, Hong Kong now is in the grip of a devastating outbreak, led by infections from the variant BA.2.

It now is experiencing deaths at a rate that is nearly double that of the US on our worst days, adjusted for population (Hong Kong has 7.4 million residents; the US has 332 million).

Yet even with that massive population difference, Hong Kong still has more infections daily -- about 55,000 -- than the US does (less than 52,000). That's not adjusted for population.

What happened? First, the BA.2 variant is even more contagious than omicron. But more importantly, while case numbers were low, Hong Kong did not prepare for the probability that a variant would overwhelm its "zero COVID" measures. Specifically, the government failed to get most of its most vulnerable citizens vaccinated to guard against just such an outbreak.

In the US, 85 percent of residents over age 75 are fully vaccinated. In Hong Kong, only 55 percent of residents over age 70 and a measly 26 percent of the population over 80 are vaccinated.

The result? 91 percent of the deaths in this recent wave of infections were among those who had not been fully vaccinated.

Hospitals are so overwhelmed that gurneys full of patients are lined up on the streets outside. They, too, did not use the months of drastically low COVID cases to prepare for the day when cases would surge.

It's easy to become complacent about the virus, especially as a surge ebbs. But this is unlike any previous coronavirus, so its future as an infectious disease circulating around the world is difficult to predict.

Epidemiologists say it will become an endemicity: a pathogen that persists in a community or population over time. But will it become more of a flu-like disease, with cold-weather outbreaks that sicken people, send them to the hospital, and kill the most vulnerable (but at far lower rates than we have seen so far)? Or will the virus continue to produce variants that evade immunity and can infect -- and severely sicken and kill -- a lot of people?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record at this point, the answer is vaccinations.

Please stay vigilant.

THIS IS PUTIN'S WAR

AP PHOTO A Ukrainian father, named only as Serhii, cradled the head of his deceased 16-year-old son, Iliya, who was killed by a Russian shell in the port city of Mariupol while he was playing football near a school.

When I looked at the covering in the photo above, it reminded me of a newborn's receiving blanket. I wonder if that boy's mother brought him home as an infant in a similar wrap. And now he's departing this earth, leaving his devastated family, in a blanket covered with his blood. His blood, and the blood of scores of Ukrainian men, women, and children, are indelible stains on Putin's hands. As of earlier this week, the United Nations had officially recorded hundreds of civilian casualties across Ukraine: 249 killed -- including 17 kids and 27 women -- and 533 injured. Those numbers have no doubt climbed significantly as Russia has escalated its bombing in more cities and towns in the past couple of days. People trying to bury their dead in cemeteries have been targets of Russian missiles. In Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, a humanitarian crisis is at hand. Russian missiles have destroyed the infrastructure, and the mayor says its residents have no electricity, running water, or heat. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels that the world must brace for things to get much worse, "with more death, more suffering, and more destruction, as the Russian armed forces bring in heavier weaponry and continue their attacks across the country."