by No lessons at all today, so I made some headway with my book. I really need a check-up with the Romanian teacher before I plough on too much further. I got a frustrated text from one of my students, who said she is putting herself in danger by showing up to work at her Italian-headquartered (!) coffee machine company. The more privileged employees are able to work from home, but for some reason they still have to deliver machines to Guatemala and Mexico. That’s bloody stupid. “C’est la fucking vie,” she texted me.
Everywhere you look on the map, coronavirus is various levels of awful. Things continue to look absolutely terrible in the US, with outbreaks springing up seemingly all over the country amid frankly dangerous leadership. The UK saw 569 new deaths in the latest daily update, a similarly tragic figure to yesterday. Italy might finally be getting on top of their unbelievably dreadful situation, and hopefully Spain won’t be far behind, although their numbers today were shocking. Globally, confirmed cases are at one million, a meaningless number really, while deaths (a much more meaningful figure, sadly) have passed 50,000.
Heaven help Africa when it spreads there. I read today that the Central African Republic, a country I know next to nothing about, has three ventilators for the entire population, which is similar to that of New Zealand. (As for the CAR’s area, it is about the size of France.)
Of the 23 deaths announced today in Romania (so far), 16 were men, including a 34-year-old man who was hospitalised in Suceava. Just awful. The fatality rate from COVID-19 is something like twice as high in men as in women. Perhaps it’s due to all the comorbidities like hypertension and diabetes that are more prevalent in men. (Originally they thought it was to do with smoking – about half of Chinese men smoke but very few women do, but the same gender imbalance has been seen in Italy and the UK too, even though smoking rates are much more even in both those countries.)
Here is the latest chart:
