TallGuyJohninBKK

The above AIER article is from spring 2021. It cites a 1.1 million COVID deaths for the U.S. scenario using Ferguson's forecasts with social distancing and lockdowns, which were only sporadically and temporarily enforced in the U.S. (where a lot of policy decisions were left to individual states), and then does a one year after comparison as of the 2021 time of the article. And yet today, the U.S. has a cumulative COVID death toll for the U.S. -- AFTER vaccines and what various COVID control measures were employed for relatively brief periods of time -- of almost 1.2 million. That doesn't sound very wrong to me. Source:

Your post above is just repeating the same Sweden vs larger European country comparisons made above, while ignoring the more comparable Sweden vs. other Nordic country comparisons made in the same article, that you decided not to quote. From the above cited article, re Sweden: "Experts have suggested that socio-demographic factors could have played a huge part in keeping down excess deaths, meaning that the policy of shunning formal lockdowns may not have worked equally well in other countries. These factors include “having a high rate of single-person households”, therefore reducing opportunities for transmission, as well as a “low population density compared to countries such as the UK and Italy”, said the Daily Mail." AND Neighbourhood comparison "While Sweden’s death figures are lower than many European nations, comparing its figures to other Nordic countries shows you “cannot call Sweden a success”, Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist at the University of East Anglia, told the Daily Mail. ... Sweden’s neighbours fared significantly better in keeping excess death rates down, with Denmark logging just 32 excess deaths per 100,000, while Norway logged “one fewer death per 100,000 than expected”, said the paper." https://theweek.com/news/science-health/956673/did-sweden-covid-experiment-pay-off As the above article points out, Sweden faring better than larger European countries re COVID mortality could have had as much or more to do with their very different socio-demographic characteristics among those countries than it had to do with their differing lockdown policies.

Sweden's king says 'we have failed' over COVID-19, as deaths mount December 18, 2020 STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's king said his country had failed in its handling of COVID-19, in a sharp criticism of a pandemic policy partly blamed for a high death toll among the elderly. Carl XVI Gustaf, whose son and daughter-in-law tested positive last month, used an annual royal Christmas TV special to highlight the growing impact of the virus, in a rare intervention from a monarch whose duties are largely ceremonial. ... An official commission said on Tuesday systemic shortcomings in elderly care coupled with inadequate measures from the government and agencies contributed to Sweden's particularly high death toll in nursing homes. (more) https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28S0BQ/

And then there's the bogus, false argument that all the older people in the UK who died from COVID were already on the verge of death anyway or had little time left to live. Average Covid-19 victim dies years before they otherwise would 20 July 2021 People dying from Covid-19 lose about a decade of life on average. https://fullfact.org/news/boris-johnson-whatsapp-covid-life-expectancy-cummings/ "However, we need to be clear that the Covid deaths we’ve seen so far have been despite the UK’s lockdowns. As we have said before, the evidence suggests that without lockdowns the death toll would have been higher. ... And while it is true that the pandemic has disproportionately affected older people, unlike previous large crises, such as the Second World War or the Spanish Flu, people dying of Covid have still lost about a decade of life, on average. https://fullfact.org/health/covid19-behind-the-death-toll/#:~:text=people dying of covid have still lost about a decade of life%2C on average.

We're just replaying arguments that have been raised and countered here many times before: No, death totals from COVID-19 in England have not been overstated ... "So, if a person did have COVID-19 but there was no reason to think that was at least part of the reason they died, the doctor or coroner would not write it on the death certificate. In other words, if COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, it is always part of the cause of death, either on its own or in combination with other health conditions," he [the ONS spokesman] said. ... "Claims that COVID-19 deaths are lower than reported have been common throughout the pandemic from critics who argue the virus is not as serious as we are being led to believe. In fact, however, researchers have found evidence that overall deaths from COVID-19 have been undercounted, not overcounted, since the start of the pandemic." https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/24/youtube-videos/no-death-totals-covid-19-england-have-not-been-ove/ Then as for Sweden, it did fare better than some larger European countries like the UK, but also fared WORSE than its neighboring, more similar Nordic countries that did have and impose restrictions. So hardly the poster child for successful COVID control policies that many right-wing folks would attempt to paint it as. A year and a half after Sweden decided not to lock down, its COVID-19 death rate is up to 10 times higher than its neighbors ... Sweden decided not to implement a full-scale lockdown during the pandemic. It now has up to 10 times as many COVID-19 deaths per capita as its Nordic neighbors. Sweden also didn't fare much better economically, suggesting its gamble didn't pay off. ... Sweden has also recorded around 145 COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000 people — around three times more than Denmark, eight times more than Finland, and nearly 10 times more than Norway." https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-strategy-failed-higher-death-rate-2021-8 Scathing evaluation of Sweden's COVID response reveals 'failures' to control the virus Authorities misled the public about the benefit of masks, the report says. March 25, 2022 ... "As a result, Sweden had a higher COVID death rate than the surrounding Nordic nations. "The Swedish response to this pandemic was unique and characterised by a morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable laissez-faire approach, a consequence of structural problems in the society," the team wrote. "There was more emphasis on the protection of the 'Swedish image' than on saving and protecting lives or on an evidence-based approach." https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scathing-evaluation-swedens-covid-response-reveals-failures-control/story?id=83644832

And yet 230,000+ UK folks directly died from COVID during the pandemic, according to the UK government, and that was AFTER the lockdowns occurred and vaccines were widely deployed.... Which makes Ferguson's original prediction of hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths in the UK if NO action was taken pretty much in the ballpark -- all the political bloviating aside. All the posted comments above talk about all kinds of things, EXCEPT how many UK people in fact did from COVID in the UK, which seems to be a topic the anti-lockdown, Ferguson-focused folks attempt to avoid. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ PS - You really don't want to be quoting Stanford's John Ioannidis, a popular anti-lockdown academic, on this subject, considering that he forecast early in the pandemic in 2020 that the U.S. might have 10,000 COVID deaths... and the U.S. officially is now at about 1.2 million and rising. "Despite warning about the hazards of forecasting with incomplete data, Ioannidis ventured a prediction of his own. Based on mortality figures from the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak, he wrote that the virus might claim only 10,000 lives in the United States. (Later he would seek to portray this figure as his “lower bound” estimate.) ... Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, recalled his bafflement at Ioannidis’s essay and said it was already clear that strict social distancing measures were necessary to avoid overflowing hospitals. “We had enough evidence to see that uncontrolled spread was very dangerous,” Lipsitch said. “The idea that we should just sort of sit by and gather data calmly struck me as incredibly naive.” https://archive.ph/QscVJ#selection-1653.0-1653.341 Talk about REALLY getting one's predictions wrong!

I realize Neil Ferguson is a favorite whipping boy of the anti COVID lockdown folks in the UK.... But did he get it "spectacularly wrong" as claimed above? History and the facts would say NO. Specifically, as the above-cited Wikipedia report recounts: "He said that the new coronavirus could affect up to 60% of the UK's population, in the worst-case scenario,[53] and "suggest(ed) that the impact of the unfolding epidemic may be comparable to the major influenza pandemics of the twentieth century."[45][54][55]" As it turned out, COVID in fact became one of the world's worst, deadliest pandemics of the past 100 years dating back to the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920. Then further from Wikipedia on Ferguson: "His team's publication in mid-March [2020] of the projections that the UK could face hundreds of thousands of deaths [emphasis added] from COVID-19 without strict social distancing measures, gained widespread media attention.[56]" And as the BBC later reported looking back: "Prof Ferguson's modelling of the virus's transmission suggested 250,000 people [emphasis added] could die without drastic action. This led Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce on 23 March that he was imposing widespread curbs on daily life aimed at stopping the spread of the virus." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52553229 Another report at the time in the journal Nature said Ferguson's estimate of COVID deaths if NOTHING were done reached 500,000. "updated data in the Imperial team’s model1 indicated that the United Kingdom’s health service would soon be overwhelmed with severe cases of COVID-19, and might face more than 500,000 deaths if the government took no action..." -- which, of course, was a scenario that did NOT occur as the UK government did act at the time. https://archive.ph/t8zOh#selection-1175.64-1181.182 And just to note, those Ferguson forecasts were made in spring 2020 BEFORE any COVID vaccines had been created or deployed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist)#COVID-19_–_2020 So where did the UK end up in terms of COVID deaths even AFTER the country finally, after some delays due to political dithering, made a series of on-again, off-again lockdowns? And after the impact of mass deployment of COVID vaccines that began in late 2020? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ And how much worse would COVID deaths have been in the UK in the absence of COVID vaccines, which didn't exist at the time Ferguson made his original forecast? Add several hundred thousand more deaths on top of those the actually occurred. "According to World Health Organization data, 400,000 lives in England are estimated to have been saved up to March 2023 due to the COVID-19 vaccine programme." https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2024/04/16/whos-eligible-for-the-2024-covid-19-vaccine-or-spring-booster/ All of the above pretty much shows that Ferguson was certainly in the right realm with his early 2020 forecast about what could have occurred in the absence of actions. And as the cited Wikipedia entry above further notes: "The COVID-19 computer model which Ferguson authored (see CovidSim) was initially criticised as "unreliable" and "a buggy mess,"[61][62] but subsequent efforts to reproduce the results were successful.[63]" Also, FWIW, the above cited assessment by Lord Sumption mainly faults the UK government for not adequately considering the follow-on economic and other impacts of the lockdowns. But he doesn't seem to say much at all about how close the COVID death numbers forecast by Ferguson ended up being to what actually occurred in the UK, after including the impacts of lives saved by the COVID vaccines that weren't and couldn't have been part of Ferguson's early 2020 forecast. https://www.thetimes.com/article/7bd50604-2559-11ed-a44e-83ef2a2167ff There also have been other, differing opinion assessments of the effects of the COVID lockdowns in various countries at least in terms of limiting infections, such as from the UK Royal Society of top scientists: Lockdowns and face masks ‘unequivocally’ cut spread of Covid, report finds Royal Society review looks at non-pharmaceutical interventions when applied in packages of several measures Measures taken during the Covid pandemic such as social distancing and wearing face masks “unequivocally” reduced the spread of infections, a report has found. Experts looked at the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – not drugs or vaccines – when applied in packages that combine a number of measures that complement one another. The Royal Society report, called Covid-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions, reviewed the evidence gathered during the pandemic for six groups of NPIs and their effectiveness in reducing transmission. (more) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/24/lockdowns-face-masks-unequivocally-cut-spread-covid-study-finds And from the Royal Society report itself, which looked at the experiences of various countries they studied, on COVID lockdowns: "Social distancing and ‘lockdowns’ Most effective of all the NPIs were the social distancing measures. Stay-at-home orders, physical distancing, and restrictions on gathering size were repeatedly found to be associated with significant reduction in SARS- CoV-2 transmission, with more stringent measures having greater effects. ... Social distancing measures aimed specifically at protecting the elderly, such as restrictions on visitors and ‘cohorting’ staff with residents in care homes (separating residents into groups, each cared for by a specific group of staff), were frequently associated with reduced transmission and reduced outbreaks within care homes. ... The effective application of NPIs ‘buys time’ to allow the development, evaluation and manufacturing of such therapies and vaccines at scale. So there is every reason to think that the application of combinations of NPIs will be important in future pandemics, particularly at early stages with novel pathogens when there are knowledge gaps and when therapeutics and vaccines are not yet available." https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/covid-19-examining-the-effectiveness-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-executive-summary.pdf

The Kansas Flu Pandemic.... 😝 Sometimes, popular history isn't kind to the actual, established facts....

And of course, contrary to the historic common name given to that pandemic, it wasn't actually the "Spanish" one in terms of its origins. "The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in the state of Kansas in the United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. ... The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime censors in the belligerent countries suppressed bad news to maintain morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to the "Spanish flu" misnomer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

The graphic chart in your OP listed China as the second ranking country in terms of medals won in Paris. The point of my reply was to note there are some questions about just how they got to that standing. As my reply post news report noted, some of U.S. Olympic athletics organizations are none too happy at how the Chinese athletes who failed their past drug tests in some cases have been given free passes by their national anti-doping regulator and the larger international regulating entity. As reported by the AP earlier this year, news that only became public long after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics had passed: "Last week, reporting by The New York Times and German broadcaster ARD revealed that WADA had cleared the Chinese swimmers of doping violations by accepting the Chinese anti-doping agency’s reasoning that the athletes had been exposed to a banned heart medication through contamination. There was no public notice of the case, nor any provisional suspension, both of which are called for in the world anti-doping code. The quiet handling of the cases occurred about seven months before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. [emphasis added] Even a provisional suspension at that time could have put those swimmers’ eligibility for the games in jeopardy." https://apnews.com/article/olympics-china-doping-6598f950a62c7da8aec22c8209b54540 In short, there's an argument to be made that the U.S. might have fared even better, particularly versus China, if the anti-doping rules were being consistently enforced as supposedly is required.

COVID was 10th leading cause of death in 2023, down from 4th in 2022: CDC August 9, 2024 COVID-19 has significantly fallen as a leading cause of death in the U.S. for the first time since the pandemic began, according to new provisional data published Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ... The report did not go into reasons for why deaths have fallen, but Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said likely reasons include the prevention of COVID fatalities through vaccines, treatments for early onset illness and a better overall understanding of the virus. "Being on the other side of the pandemic played a big part in seeing this overall mortality rate go down," he said. 'This is, in large part, related to the public health effort, especially vaccines that, of course, saved so many lives." (more) https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-now-10th-leading-cause-death-2023-4th/story?id=112673092

August 9, 2024 Provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) on the top causes of deaths in the United States in 2023 shows COVID-19 dropped to the tenth leading cause of death. In 2022, it was the fourth leading cause of death, meaning deaths from COVID dropped by 68.9% in 1 year. There were 76,446 deaths from COVID-19 in 2023, and 245,614 in 2022. In 2023, the leading causes of death in the United States were heart disease (680,909 deaths), cancer (613,331), and unintentional injury (222,518). ... For COVID, the death rate decreased from 2022 to 2023 for all age groups, but the age-adjusted COVID-19–associated death rate per 100,000 among males (22.1) was higher than that among females (15.4). COVID-19–associated death rates decreased from 2022 to 2023 for all racial and ethnic groups, the authors said. (more) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/covid-drops-10th-leading-cause-death-us "The National Center for Health Statistics’ (NCHS) National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) collects and reports annual mortality statistics using U.S. death certificate data. Because of the time needed to investigate certain causes of death and to process and review death data, final annual mortality data for a given year are typically released 11 months after the end of the calendar year. Provisional data, which are based on preliminary death certificate data sent to NCHS, provide an early estimate of deaths before the release of final data. ... NCHS coded the causes of death according to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, which details disease classification and the designation of underlying cause of death§ (2). COVID-19 death counts and rates include deaths for which COVID-19 is listed on the death certificate as an underlying or contributing cause of death.¶ Leading causes of death were ranked by counts based on underlying cause of death (3)." [emphasis added] ¶ The underlying cause of death is the disease or injury that initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death. A contributing cause of death is a disease or injury also listed on the death certificate, that is not classified as the underlying cause of death. ... COVID-19 was the underlying cause for 1.6% of all deaths in 2023, decreasing from 5.7% (186,552 deaths) in 2022." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7331a1.htm#F2_down

Now the question for the future will be, how many of the latest Paris medal winners will end up being found to have used performance enhancing drugs in violation of Olympic rules? Another Chinese doping controversy pops up during Olympic swimming competition July 30, 2024 The New York Times reported Tuesday that two top Chinese swimmers — including one on this year’s Olympic team — tested positive for a banned steroid in 2022 but were eventually cleared to compete by Chinese officials. ... In the most widely reported incident, 11 swimmers named to the Chinese Olympic team were among 23 who tested positive for a banned substance six months before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. They were allowed to compete and went on to win gold medals in three events. One of those swimmers, Zhang Yufei, has won two bronzes in France, one in the women’s 100 butterfly and another as part of the 4x100 freestyle relay. ... The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which handled that case, released a statement from its CEO, Travis Tygart, who is one of the most outspoken critics of WADA. “It’s crushing news to wake up to for all athletes and fans of the Olympic movement that the failures of the global anti-doping system have overshadowed what should be a moment to bring the world together,” he said. https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-doping-china-7fe883e5f9f0b6771941cdf1861fa663

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for Aug. 4 - 10, 2024: For the most recent week, the MoPH update showed continuing improvements / declines in three of four publicly reported COVID indicators -- new COVID hospitalizations, currently hospitalized COVID patients in serious condition and those requiring ventilation to breathe. The one exception was a small increase in the count of weekly COVID deaths. The latest update is another sign that Thailand's spring 2024 COVID surge has now subsided, with new weekly COVID hospitalizations almost back to mid-March levels. --519 new COVID hospitalizations, averaging 74 per day, down 41 / -7.3% from 560 the prior week --4 new COVID deaths, up 3 from 1 the prior week --371 current COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition (pneumonia symptoms), down 76 / -17% from 447 the prior week (dark purple) --153 current COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation/ventilation to breathe, down 31 / -16.8% from 184 the prior week (light purple) --------------------------------------- The reported 519 new COVID hospitalizations last week marked almost a return to the 501 level that occurred in mid-March just prior to what became Thailand's spring 2024 COVID surge, and is less than one-sixth of the recent weekly peak of 3,256 new hospitalizations reached in late June. Cumulative officially reported figures since the start of 2024 are COVID hospitalizations (36,660) & COVID deaths (198). Of the four new official COVID death reported for last week, two were male and two were female. By age, two were age 70 and above, one was age 60-69, and one was age 20-49. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main The weekly new COVID hospitalization totals since this year's spring surge began in mid-March have been: March 16 -- 501 March 23 -- 630 March 30 -- 728 April 6 -- 774 April 13 -- 849 April 20 -- 1,004 April 27 -- 1,672 May 4 -- 1,792 May 11 -- 1,880 May 18 - 1,882 May 25 -- 1,801 June 1 -- 1,863 June 8 -- 2,762 June 15 -- 2,881 June 22 -- 1,823 June 29 -- 3,256 July 6 -- 1,377 July 13 -- 1,004 July 20 -- 1,067 July 27 -- 928 Aug. 3 -- 560 Aug. 10 -- 519 By comparison, Thailand's key weekly COVID indicators to start 2024 were 664 new COVID hospitalizations and 4 COVID deaths for the first week of the year. For the comparable week last year in 2023, there were 318 new COVID hospitalizations and 7 COVID deaths.

Also, in terms of the economic hardships that COVID caused on people, it might be instructive to compare how Thailand's government responded vs. how a place like the U.S. responded. Even before COVID, Thailand barely had any social safety net provisions for its people. And although the government promised economic/financial aid to people during the pandemic, it seems from news reporting that most ordinary Thais didn't end up receiving much or any, including the many who work for themselves or are part of the cash-only gray economy. In short, the ordinary Thai citizen pretty much was left to financially fend for themselves. In contrast, the U.S. had and has a pretty robust system of unemployment benefits (monthly payments) that people who lost their jobs during COVID were able to receive, along with separate food/grocery subsidies (food stamps for the unemployed). The federal government also enacted several years of cash tax credits on a nationwide basis (covering pretty much everyone) to offer financial support. And there were federal loans widely available during the COVID era to support businesses. Although fraudulent applications resulted in a lot of that money being misused, still a lot of it also went to support needy and legitimate people/businesses. So, IMHO, with its considerable wealth, I believe Thailand and the government specifically could have done a lot more than they actually did to financially support its neediest people during the pandemic. But that's simply not the way things work here, and that's not where/how most of their money gets spent.

Talking about destroying millions of people's lives as in the OP, COVID the virus also KILLED somewhere between 7 MILLION (the official figure) and about 30 million (the estimate of excess deaths due to COVID and related factors) worldwide. Numerous studies have shown that those numbers could have been much smaller had more people chosen to get vaccinated and better followed public health precautions... But many didn't, and we can see the results. However, given the choice between temporary economic hardship from COVID vs. being dead from COVID, I'd choose the temporary economic hardship. Hardship a person can recover and come back from. DEAD, there's no coming back from. In the case of Thailand, its economy and workforce perhaps suffered more than others because it was and is so substantially reliant on tourism, which of course took a hit during the pandemic, as it did pretty much everywhere. If Thailand didn't have an economy where the vast share of the wealth was before COVID and even now still is concentrated in the hands of a very few elites, and many of the ordinary people with low skills and marginal education scraping to just get by, people left bereft by the loss of tourism might not be driven into committing crimes. But that imbalance existed long before COVID and COVID didn't cause or create it. Also PS - before people start talking about punishing countries for COVID, it might be a good idea to actually establish some proof that there's something to be punished for. Contrary to a lot of right-wing claims, most public health researchers and scientists believe the specific COVID virus emerged naturally jumping from animals to humans and was not an engineered virus or one unleashed from a lab leak. And thus far, at least, there's been no actual proof to the contrary.

The latest COVID update from the U.S. CDC posted yesterday reported COVID causing (the main or contributing cause on death certificates) more than 500 deaths per week in the U.S. and rising as of the end of July, up from a pandemic era low of about 300 per week less than two months ago in early June. By comparison, the peak of reported COVID deaths in the U.S. was more than 25,000 per week in mid-January 2021. The winter COVID surge in January 2024 peaked at more than 2,500 weekly COVID deaths. https://aseannow.com/topic/1332736-periodic-covid-updates-for-the-united-states/?do=findComment&comment=19137616 https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00

A rise in Covid infections began in early June, and wastewater data from the CDC shows levels are still rising. Aug. 9, 2024 The U.S. is in what may end up being its biggest summer wave of Covid, with no end yet in sight. “If you just talk about infections, this is probably going to end up becoming the largest summer wave we’ve had,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and former White House Covid-19 response coordinator. “It’s still not as big as the winter waves, but it is starting to get close.” It's not only in the U.S. There's been a worldwide surge in infections in recent weeks, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for Covid at the World Health Organization, said in a briefing this week. The proportion of tests coming back positive for Covid in Europe is above 20%, with wastewater data suggesting case numbers may be two to 20 times higher than what's being reported, Van Kerkhove said. (more) https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-us-largest-summer-wave-cdc-high-transmission-rcna165765 Summer covid surge hits at least 84 countries and continues to climb August 7, 2024 A summer covid wave — and the accompanying fevers, coughs and general misery — continues to wash over the Americas and parts of Asia and Europe, including the Paris Olympics, offering the latest evidence that the coronavirus moves in ways distinct from other respiratory ailments. The World Health Organization said this week that the virus is increasing in at least 84 countries despite perceptions that the pathogen is a remnant of the past. Disease trackers sounded alarms that diminished testing and low vaccination rates could provide fertile terrain for more dangerous viral variants to take hold. “Covid-19 is still very much with us,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, said at a news briefing Tuesday. ... The rise in global cases comes during pandemic fatigue and a decline in testing for the virus and reporting of cases. As a result, health agencies confront significant challenges in monitoring and understanding the virus’s impact. (more) Washington Post https://archive.ph/sFFe9

CDC COVID update for August 9, 2024: COVID-19 "Most areas of the country are experiencing consistent increases in COVID-19 activity, with substantial increases in the southern United States. COVID-19 test positivity, emergency department visits, and rates of COVID-19–associated hospitalizations remain elevated, particularly among adults 65+. Surges like this are known to occur throughout the year, including during the summer months." https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/snapshot.html https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00 With the absence of any comprehensive COVID infection testing and reporting program in the U.S. and reduced reporting of COVID hospitalization data, public health officials increasingly have turned to wastewater monitoring of COVID viral content as a primary forward-looking indicator of COVID activity and trends in the country, as follows: https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-nationaltrend.html "Wastewater (sewage) can be tested to detect traces of infectious diseases circulating in a community, even if people don’t have symptoms. You can use these data as an early warning that levels of infections may be increasing or decreasing in your community." 27 States with "very high" levels: Alabama Alaska Arkansas California Colorado Florida Idaho Kansas Louisiana Maine Maryland Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Nevada New Hampshire New Mexico North Carolina Oklahoma Oregon South Carolina Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Washington Wyoming "This map shows the median Wastewater Viral Activity Level of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) reported by wastewater treatment plants within each state or territory over the previous week. Wastewater monitoring can detect viruses spreading from one person to another within a community earlier than clinical testing and before people who are sick go to their doctor or hospital. It can also detect infections without symptoms. If you see increased Wastewater Viral Activity Levels of SARS-CoV-2, it might indicate that there is a higher risk of infection." https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-currentlevels.html

Obviously, the kid should have been prosecuted to the fullest for trying to subvert Virginia's stalwart elections system! 😄 But I'm guessing he wasn't. And from the same report, as posted above: "Last year, the elections department said nearly 3,400 people were wrongly removed from voter rolls after their probation violations were misclassified as new felony convictions in a database maintained by state police. An investigation by the state’s inspector general’s office found some Virginians were wrongly taken off voter rolls and others were mistakenly allowed to vote after poor communication and the “inadequate” development of the state’s voter registration system led to “system failures.” Seems as though the Republican governor there has more problems with his state's voter registration system than just with his narrow obsession with supposed non-citizen voter registrations.

Also, just to put things in some context... 1. the 6,300+ people the state is now saying were removed from the voting rolls for supposedly being non-citizens, or apparently also not providing enough proof that they are citizens, is the TOTAL the state has removed over the past 2-1/2 years since Youngkin and his fellow Republican attorney general took office in early 2022.... And that's out of about 4.5 million registered voters in the state. 2. nowhere in the above announcement do Youngkin or his minions make any claims about what if any numbers of the supposed non-citizens, based on their roll scrubbing, actually did vote in any of the state's past elections. You'd think if any meaningful number of actual improper votes had occurred, they wouldn't be shy about reporting that. But instead, thus far, silence on that point. Hmmm... 3. Or how about state prosecutions in Virginia for illegal voting? Nope, nothing about that either in the governor's announcement.... So where's all the supposedly illegal voting that the Republicans keep claiming exists... In light of their silence on that point, I certainly hope Gov. Youngkin and his attorney general aren't soft on actual illegal voters!

Virginia has been down this same road before under Republican Gov. Youngkin, and it didn't end well for the state and its credibility, the prior episode below involving former convicted felons who had had their voting rights restored, only to then be wrongly booted off the voting rolls. One has to wonder whether they did any better in this latest episode. Virginia admits thousands of voters wrongly purged days before election 1 Nov 2023 Virginia election officials wrongly removed almost 3,400 eligible voters from the state’s voter rolls, a significant error that has caused alarm among voting rights groups just days before critical state elections that will determine which party controls the state legislature. Officials announced the number of voters affected by the purge on Friday – more than 10 times the number of people they had initially said were affected. Macaulay Porter, a spokesperson for the governor, Glenn Youngkin, had told the Washington Post on 6 October that at least 270 people had been wrongly removed and that officials didn’t expect that number to rise much. Officials declined to provide updates on the number affected until Friday, when they announced that the actual number was “nearly 3,400” (they did not provide an exact figure). VPM, Virginia’s NPR affiliate, first reported on the issue in September. ... Earlier this year, Virginia announced it had identified 10,558 people who had had their rights restored but had subsequently committed a new felony. That data wasn’t accurate. The Virginia state police, which had been supplying the data to the state, had been wrongly flagging people as having committed a new felony if they had received a technical violation of their probation – something like failing to show up for a meeting or failing a urine test. (more) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/01/youngkin-virginia-election-voters-removed

Here's the charts from the latest UKHSA weekly COVID update for England as of Aug. 8: My text summary - In a marked shift from recent weeks of increases, all the major publicly reported COVID indicators for England showed improvement / declines in the latest weekly update. Those included new weekly COVID cases (not an especially reliable indicator these days), but also sizable declines in weekly confirmed new COVID deaths, which fell back below the 200 level to 174 (down 17.5%), weekly new COVID hospitalizations (down 14.4%) and the positivity rate for COVID tests (7-day rolling average), although that rate remained high at 14.8%, down from 15.8% in the prior weekly report. https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#deaths Weekly COVID deaths from the most recent weekly low in May: Weekly data for deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate in England Up to and including 26 July 2024 (some recent prior week figures have been revised vs prior weekly reports): Date -- Amount 26 Jul 2024 -- 174 19 Jul 2024 -- 211 12 Jul 2024 -- 199 5 Jul 2024 -- 163 28 Jun 2024 -- 185 21 Jun 2024 -- 149 14 Jun 2024 -- 156 7 Jun 2024 -- 146 31 May 2024 -- 113 24 May 2024 -- 147 17 May 2024 -- 168 10 May 2024 -- 93 https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/ https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#healthcare https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#testing

AFAIK, no major or minor political party in the U.S. has been dissolved and banned, nor have its slate of candidates been removed and banned -- unlike what's occurred in Thailand. Heck, in the U.S. system, even a convicted criminal can get to run for president and serve if elected.

OP, do you have a desired general range of price per night you're looking for? That would help narrow the options some.