On the covid scene, everything is looking up. But there’s a snake in the grass.
For four full weeks now, we’ve had fewer than a thousand covid deaths a day. Our average has been 691[i].[ii] And on April 4th, we had a mere 272 deaths.
Meanwhile, Brazil and India have both shot beyond 3,000 deaths in a single day, day after day, after day,[iii]. [iv] In other words, Brazil and India are now experiencing the sort of massive daily death tolls we used to have in February when we went over 5,000[v] covid deaths in a single day[vi] and had the worst covid problem in the world.
We are now having it so good while India and Brazil are having it so bad for a simple reason. We’ve put 234 million vaccine shots into American arms. Which means we are now far ahead of the rest of the western world in vaccinations.
Only China outpaces us in the total number of vaccinations[vii] put in arms per day.[viii]
Because we have been doing so well, on Tuesday April 27th,[ix] the CDC decreed that those who are vaccinated no longer need to wear their face masks when they are outdoors even if they are with a handful of friends…as long as those friends are vaccinated.
But the covid crisis is not over. Not by a long shot. Why? In the last year, covid has proven that every time we lower our guard, we are hit with another covid wave. And there is another crop of coronavirus mutants just waiting to get its teeth into us. It’s in India, where hospitals have run out of oxygen and beds and the sick are dying on the sidewalks and parking lots outside of hospital entrances. It’s so bad in India that space for cremation has run out.
But that’s not all. the New York Times reports that at India’s huge “Sir Ganga Ram Hospital…37 fully vaccinated doctors came down with Covid-19 earlier this month.”[x] Yes, 37 fully-vaccinated doctors. Let me repeat, fully-vaccinated. The doctors’ covid symptoms were mild. Nonetheless, 37 fully vaccinated doctors getting covid is shocking.
What in the world does India have to do with us? Every time the coronavirus infects another victim anywhere in the world, that victim becomes a research and development lab for new covid mutations that will soon reach you and me. And estimates are that between two and 32 new mutations have evolved in India. Including one ominously called the triple mutant.[xi] One of those Indian virus mutants has already reached the usa.[xii]
Which means that India may be brewing a fifth wave for the United States. So far research indicates that our vaccines take the bite out of even the Indian mutants.[xiii] Remember, the 37 vaccinated Indian doctors who came down with covid only had mild symptoms. But if the covid virus can continue to infect humans by the hundreds of millions, it is possible that one of these days, a new mutant may be able to overcome the immune defenses of even the vaccinated.
There’s one more thing that we learned at the end of April. A study published in the queen of the science journals, Nature, looked at 73,000 people[xiv] and found that even if you’ve had covid and have overcome it, you may have symptoms that will linger for a long, long time. Those include “respiratory issues, cardiovascular problems, gastrointestinal pain, and mental health issues, including memory loss.” Topping it all off, as san Francisco’s KGO radio put it, “1 to 6 months after infection,….COVID-19 survivors were around 50 percent more likely to die compared to those who didn’t have COVID-19.”[xv] So get vaccinated. And hope that Indians get vaccinated, too.
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Howard Bloom, author of seven books including The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud by England’s Channel 4 TV and “the next Stephen Hawking” by Gear Magazine. The Office of the Secretary of Defense hosted a forum on Bloom’s second book, Global Brain, and brought in experts from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.
[i] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
[ii] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html
[iii] India 3,293 deaths 4/28, 3,086 brazil deaths 4/28, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/cumulative-cases
[iv] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/28/covid-india-suffers-worst-day-of-pandemic-with-record-number-of-cases-and-deaths
[v] 5,117 on February 4th, 2021, https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+covid+deaths+monday+usa&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS898US898&oq=how+many+covid+deaths+monday+usa&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13j0i390j69i64l2.14315j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
[vi] January 20, 2021, https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths
[vii] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-19-vaccination-doses
[viii] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-19-vaccination-doses
[ix] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-mask-guidelines-covid-vaccine/
[x] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/world/asia/india-covid19-variant.html
[xi] https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a36232744/what-is-triple-mutant-variant-coronavirus/
[xii] https://www.wsj.com/articles/indian-covid-19-variant-found-in-u-s-across-globe-as-foreign-help-arrives-11619545081
[xiii] https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a36232744/what-is-triple-mutant-variant-coronavirus/
[xiv] The study published in the journal Nature involved at least 73,000 non-hospitalized coronavirus patients from the Veterans Affairs Health System. https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-long-term-side-effects-covid-haulers-vaccine/10554812/
[xv] https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-long-term-side-effects-covid-haulers-vaccine/10554812/