epidemic – Page 5 – Desdemona Despair

EIU Democracy Index 2022, global map by regime type. The average global index score stagnated in 2022. Despite expectations of a rebound after the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions, the score was almost unchanged, at 5.29 (on a 0-10 scale), compared with 5.28 in 2021. The positive effect of the restoration of individual freedoms was cancelled out by negative developments globally. The scores of more than half of the countries measured by the index either stagnated or declined. Western Europe was a positive outlier, being the only region whose score returned to pre-pandemic levels. Graphic: EIU

February 3, 2023

EIU Democracy Index 2022: Frontline democracy and the battle for Ukraine – “Overall the story is one of stagnation. This is a dismal result given that in 2022 the world started to move on from the pandemic-related suppression of individual liberties that persisted through 2020 and 2021”

1 February 2023 (EIU) – The Democracy Index, which began in 2006, provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories. This covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s states (microstates are excluded). The Democracy Index is based on five […]

Avoidable deaths per 100,000 population (standardized rates) in OECD nations, 2000-2020. Avoidable deaths per 100,000 population in the U.S. are higher than the OECD average. Graphic: The Commonwealth Fund

January 31, 2023

U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022: Accelerating spending, worsening outcomes – “Americans are more likely to die younger, and from avoidable causes, than residents of peer countries”

By Munira Z. Gunja, Evan D. Gumas, and Reginald D. Williams II 31 January 2023 (The Commonwealth Fund) – In the previous edition of U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, we reported that people in the United States experience the worst health outcomes overall of any high-income nation.1 Americans are more likely to die younger, and […]

Map showing 28-day COVID-19 cases in U.S. counties on 26 January 2023. Graphic: Johns Hopkins University

January 26, 2023

Greg Olear: The Plague turns three – More than a million Americans are dead of COVID-19. Where is the outrage? “U.S. performance at the level of South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, or Japan in containing the pandemic would have saved over 300,000 American lives in 2020 alone”

By Greg Olear 24 January 2023 (Substack) – Three years ago today, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed a second travel-related infection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the United States, this time in Illinois. The Illinois case was the epidemiological equivalent of the second airplane hitting the World Trade Center. It meant that the first U.S. […]

Percentage of OECD countries experiencing higher-than-average inflation, 1970-2022. The global inflation shock that began in the United States in 2021 and took hold worldwide in 2022 will have powerful economic and political ripple effects in 2023. It will be the principal driver of global recession, add to financial stress, and stoke social discontent and political instability everywhere. Today’s historically high inflation comes from multiple sources. First was the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted governments to cushion the fall in incomes with extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus at the same time that it disrupted global supply. Then, just as the United States and Europe were coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines, China doubled down on its zero-Covid policy, locking down the global economy’s most important manufacturing and shipping hubs. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s sanctions in response put a strain on the global supply of energy, food, and fertilizer. This unprecedented confluence of overlapping shocks pushed inflation to levels most countries hadn’t seen in nearly 50 years. Graphic: Eurasia Group

January 22, 2023

Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2023 – “The risks this year are the most dangerous we’ve encountered in the 25 years since we started Eurasia Group”

By Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan 3 January 2023 (Eurasia Group) – Russia has no way to win in Ukraine. The European Union is stronger than ever. NATO rediscovered its reason for being. The G7 is strengthening. Renewables are becoming dirt cheap. American hard power remains unrivaled. Midterms in the United States were decidedly normal […]

Yearly change in life expectancy in the U.S. and 30 other countries, 1901-2022. Data: Schöley, et al., 2022. Graphic: Fortune

January 10, 2023

The first global decline in life expectancy since World War II poses a major threat to the economy

By Matthew Heimer and Nicolas Rapp6 December 2022 (Fortune) – COVID’s devastation shows up starkly in life expectancy data: The pandemic’s peak marked the first time since World War II that LE (as demographers call it) declined across the globe. The graphic above is based on a data set that focuses mostly on Europe, but similar […]

FAO Food Price Index in real terms, 1961-2022. In 2022, the U.N. organization’s Food Price Index hit the highest level since its records began in 1961, according to FAO data. Data: UN FAO. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

January 6, 2023

Global food prices in 2022 hit record high amid drought, war

ROME, 6 January 2023 (AP) – Global prices for food commodities like grain and vegetable oils were the highest on record last year even after falling for nine months in a row, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said, as Russia’s war in Ukraine, drought and other factors drove up inflation and worsened hunger worldwide. The FAO […]

Beds in acute NHS trusts taken by UK influenza patients in winter 2021/22 compared with winter 2022/23. Data: NHS Digital. Graphic: The Times and The Sunday Times

January 5, 2023

UK after Brexit: “Shocking” emergency room delays “killing up to 500 people a week” as NHS care collapses – “We are seeing equivalent levels of pressure to the early months of Covid”

By Rhys Blakely and Henry Zeffman 2 January 2023 (The Times) – As many as 500 people are dying each week because of delays in emergency NHS care, a senior doctor has said. Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said that a bad flu season was piling pressure on […]

Body bags lay on gurneys at the back entrance of a funeral home in Shanghai, China, on Saturday, 31 December 2022. Photo: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg

January 3, 2023

Bodies pile up in China as Covid surge overwhelms crematoriums – “Bodies are overflowing everywhere”

3 January 2023 (Bloomberg News) – For five days the elderly Chinese lady’s corpse lay decomposing in the Shanghai house she shared with her family before a hearse finally arrived to take away her remains. “We’re lucky it’s the cold winter time,” a relative said last week at Shanghai’s Longhua Funeral Home, recounting the ordeal […]

Aerial view of people arriving at a displacement camp in southern Somalia in late September 2022. Photo: Jerome Delay / AP Photo

December 31, 2022

Doomiest Images of 2022

31 December 2022 (Desdemona Despair) – The year 2022 produced the usual terrible images of abrupt climate change, from record-breaking floods in Australia to drought-stricken refugees in Africa. But 2022 had a new subject for doom imagery: large-scale war in Europe, when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. War in Europe Not since the […]

Global human population size and annual growth rate estimates, 1950-2022, and medium scenario with 95 per cent prediction intervals, 2022-2050. Over the one hundred years from 1950 to 2050, the world population was growing the fastest in the period 1962-1965, when it was increasing on average by 2.1 per cent per year. Since then, the pace of population growth has slowed by more than half owing to reduced levels of fertility. In 2020, and for the first time since 1950, the rate of population growth fell below 1 per cent per year and it is projected to continue to slow in the next few decades and through the end of this century. The global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, and add 1.18 billion in the following two decades, reaching 9.7 billion in 2050. Graphic: UN DESA

December 31, 2022

Doomiest Graphs of 2022

31 December 2022 (Desdemona Despair) – Like the year 2021, 2022 started with Desdemona obsessively tracking statistics on the Covid pandemic. The incredibly contagious Omicron variant was raging throughout the world, dwarfing the scale of the previous waves. Some of Desdemona’s friends fell ill with the disease. Fortunately, none of them died, because they were […]