A quiet few days on the virus front, although the spread of consequential challenges continues to unfold – for example, we are now told not only to expect shortages of petrol this summer (as previously written about) but also chicken and even pool chlorine. A friend who is in the food catering business reports he is paying twice what he’d previously been paying for pork meatballs. Although his supplier is in Chicago, the actual pork comes from China. Apparently, the US both exports pork to China (probably entire sides of pork) and imports it too (in added-value form such as meatballs).
Amazing that it is cheaper to ship an American side of pork to China, to process it, then ship it back to the US (in expensive refrigerated containers both ways) than it is to do all of that in Chicago. But that’s straying off our core topic, isn’t it.
Taking those points and extending them to their logical extreme, this rather depressing article is headlined “The Price of the Stuff That Makes Everything is Surging“.
One thing that is most definitely not in short supply in the US, and which is also “free” to us all (of course we pay for it indirectly through our taxes) is the Covid vaccine. Vaccine supplies are surging, while vaccination rates are plummeting. And, even though we definitely don’t need it, we may be about to get a fourth officially “emergency authorized” vaccine, this one by Novavax.
It seems like a good vaccine to me, because, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it uses existing technologies to create antibodies in our bodies, so has fewer unknowns and uncertainties. It will also be a two-shot vaccine, with perhaps three or maybe even four weeks between the two shots.
A reminder – my 460 page book “The Covid Survival Guide” is currently on sale on Amazon.com – the Kindle version is normally $8.99, but to celebrate my now 201 articles on the Covid topic, it is down to $1.99, but only until next Saturday.
Current Numbers
There were no changes of rankings among the US states.
It is nice to see highly-vaccinated Gibraltar recorded no new cases in an entire week.
The top rates in the last week table shows generally lower rates of new cases in all the top listed countries. India, while still getting all the headlines, remains way below the list, with a rate of 1,878 cases per million population over the last week, which makes it the 27th most affected country.
US Best and Worst States
| Rank | Cases/Million | Deaths/Million | ||
| A week ago | Now | A week ago | Now | |
| 1 Best | HI (22,547) | HI (23,011) | HI (338) | HI (341) |
| 2 | VT | VT | VT | VT |
| 3 | OR | OR | AK | AK |
| 4 | ME | ME | ME | ME |
| 5 | WA (52,178) | WA (53,455) | OR (589) | OR (593) |
| 47 | UT (123,343) | UT (124,148) | MS (2,411) | MS (2,419) |
| 48 | IA | IA | RI | RI |
| 49 | SD | SD | MA | MA |
| 50 | RI | RI | NY | NY |
| 51 Worst | ND (139,999) | ND (141,338) | NJ (2,857) | NJ (2,882) |
Top Case Rates Minor (population under 10 million) Countries (cases per million)
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Andorra (168,808) | Andorra (171,673) |
| 2 | Montenegro (153,885) | Montenegro |
| 3 | San Marino | San Marino |
| 4 | Gibraltar (127,156) | Gibraltar (127,156) |
| 5 | Slovenia | Slovenia |
| 6 | Luxembourg | Luxembourg |
| 7 | Aruba | Bahrain |
| 8 | Bahrain | Aruba |
| 9 | St Barth | St Barth |
| 10 | Israel (91,113) | Lithuania (92,803) |
Top Case Rates Major (population over 10 million) Countries (cases per million)
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Czech Republic (150,989) | Czech Republic (152,357) |
| 2 | USA (98,695) | USA (99,754) |
| 3 | Sweden (92,442) | Sweden (95,905) |
| 4 | Netherlands | Netherlands |
| 5 | France | France |
| 6 | Belgium | Belgium |
| 7 | Portugal | Portugal |
| 8 | Spain | Spain |
| 9 | Poland | Poland |
| 10 | Jordan | Jordan |
| 11 | Brazil | Brazil |
| 12 | Italy (65,619) | Italy (66,980) |
Top Death Rate Major Countries (deaths per million)
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Czech Republic (2,650) | Czech Republic (2,736) |
| 2 | Belgium (2,039) | Belgium (2,086) |
| 3 | Italy (1,936) | Italy |
| 4 | UK (1,867) | Brazil |
| 5 | Brazil (1,747) | UK (1,871) |
| 6 | Peru (1,747) | Peru (1,863) |
| 7 | USA (1,717) | Poland (1,800) |
| 8 | Poland (1,666) | USA (1,777) |
| 9 | Portugal (1,646) | Spain (1,672) |
| 10 | Spain (1,640) | Mexico (1,670) |
Top Rates in New Cases Reported in the Last Week (new cases per million) for Countries over one million population
| Rank | One Week Ago | Today |
| 1 | Uruguay 5,776 | Uruguay 5,060 |
| 2 | Cyprus 5,014 | Bahrain 4,529 |
| 3 | Turkey | Cyprus |
| 4 | Bahrain | Argentina |
| 5 | Argentina | Lithuania |
| 6 | Croatia | Croatia |
| 7 | Netherlands | Turkey |
| 8 | France | Netherlands |
| 9 | Lithuania | Mongolia |
| 10 | Mongolia | Latvia |
| 11 | Sweden 2,389 | France 2,358 |
| 12 | Colombia 2,368 | Colombia 2,322 |
The rest of this newsletter is for the very kind Travel Insider Supporters – it is their support that makes all of this possible, and it seems fair they get additional material in return. If you’re not yet a Supporter, please consider becoming one, and get instant access to the rest of the Diary Entry, additional material on previous diary entries, and much extra content on other parts of the website too.
If you’re a contributor, you should make sure you’re logged in to the website, and when you are, you’ll see the purple text and balance of the newsletter below on the website. If you’re not logged in, or reading this via email, you need to log in on the website first.
Items below include some thoughts on mask-wearing – are the authorities telling us the truth, is it our patriotic duty to wear masks even when we don’t need to, why is the TSA the agency that decides if we wear masks on planes or not, and the problems with masks fogging glasses, a clear indicator of the link between obesity and increased Covid risk, not all vaccine side effects are the fault of the vaccine, great news in Sunday’s US Covid stats, vaccination stats both by state within the US and internationally, the true death rate from Covid, Disney is open, but will it do the right thing, CR is closed (and will it do the right thing when it reopens), why is it illegal to mandate Covid vaccines for school children but lawful to mandate other vaccines for school children, and is it really exclusively the fault of a half dozen nations alone that most of the world is short of vaccine.
SUPPORTER ONLY CONTENT
……….
END OF SUPPORTER ONLY CONTENT
Please stay happy and healthy; all going well, I’ll be back again on Thursday.
Please click here for a listing of all our Covid-19 articles.
