|
|
As more and more of the U.S. puts aside COVID-19 restrictions and everyday life returns to normalcy, the situation across Asia is quite different… fear of the Delta variant is spreading across the continents.
Anyway, that’s the sales pitch in a major article in The New York Times last week. They reported that over the past two weeks, in Southern China, an outbreak of the Delta variant sparked a renewed lockdown in the industrial city of Guangzhou. Japan’s government declared it is dealing with a fourth round of infections, and there is fear that the virus will prove devastating to the Olympics, scheduled to take place there in late July and early August. Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Australia have all suffered recent outbreaks.
Vax Gap
The vaccination rates of Asian countries don’t begin to compare with those of developed Western nations. Only 14 percent of Japanese have received one dose of vaccine; across Asia, that figure is still only 20 percent. By contrast, the figures for France, the U.S. and the U.K. are 45 percent, more than 50 percent and more than 60 percent, respectively.
Japan, China, South Korea and Australia have seen a marked increase in vaccinations recently, but they still don’t approach the near-universal availability of vaccines seen in the U.S. and elsewhere. And vaccination campaigns in Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand have just barely begun.
The lag in vaccinations is attributed to supply issues and to those countries’ hesitancy to commit early on to aggressive vaccination campaigns. So the region that seemed to lead the world in its initial efforts to contain the virus—lockdowns, masking and other restrictions—now seems to trail behind the curve in implementing what seems to be the most effective means of fighting it.
TRENDPOST: While the media keeps selling COVID hysteria of rising numbers of people testing positive, there was no mention in last week’s New York Times article of how many people in those countries actually died of the virus since the COVID War began 17 months ago. None. Zip, Zilch, Nada, Nichego.
For example, in Taiwan, a nation of 23,858,540 people, just 569 died of the virus. Thailand, with a population of nearly 70 million has recorded 1658 COVID fatalities. And Vietnam, with a population of nearly 100 million people has reported a grand total of 69 COVID deaths.
Yet, the fear of the deadly Delta variant keeps spreading while the facts of how many are dying from the virus, their ages, comorbidities, etc. are ignored by the mainstream media and politicians.