lev.lafayette's blog

A couple of times in the past I've written on the topic of "lying in politics". Influenced by Hannah Arendt's essay with regards to Vietnam, more than ten years ago I found it interesting to do a comparison with the Iraq war. More recently, I took a hard look at Matthew Guy's comments about crime rates in Victoria.

Today, July 6 2021, AEST, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic reached four million confirmed dead, with almost one-hundred and eight-five million aggregate cases. We can recall that from the initial outbreak in January 2020, the first million deaths weren't reached until September 11 that year, the second million on January 7th of 2021, and the third million on April 7. What will it be by the end of the year? Five, six million? As calculations come in, we will probably discover the fourth million mark was actually passed a few weeks ago.

In 1970 the people of Chile had the temerity to elect the radical socialist Salvador Allende as their President, through a coalition of Christian leftists, social democrats, democratic socialists, radical liberals, and communists. The Allende government sought to nationalise major (and often foreign-owned) industries, engage in agrarian reform, increase minimum wages, employment, enhance social security, education, and public health.

A few days prior, over a work-related video conference, an engineer based in India opened to those present their feelings on the state of their country. It was a depressing story, of death and many more infections on the campus (some of which must result in more deaths). He mentioned the incredible sadness that is affecting so many in their country, the frustration at the lack of resources the country has as the pandemic's infections and fatality rates continue their accelerating and upwards trend.

Today, April 16 AEST, the global casualty rate for SARS-CoV-2 reached three million dead, and around one-hundred and forty million aggregate cases. It is, of course, nowhere near the scale of WWII, where something in the order of 70-85 million people died when the world population was an estimated 2.3 billion, compared to the 7.7 billion of today. But of course, this is just year one.

Today is Bramble Cay Melomys Memorial Day, dedicated to Australian wildlife and especially those that have become exitinct due to human (in)action. The Bramble Cay Melomys is the first mammal to become extinct due to climate change. A rescue plan was organised, but it was too little, too late.

The Guardian cartoonist, First Dog on the Moon, has provided a series of cartoons on these events.

The following is the first of several short articles on the relationship between public finances, economic growth, and economic welfare. In this case two variables are considered, the Gini Coefficient of Income and the Total Tax Revenue as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries. In both cases the data is from c2018, the "circa" indicating that in some cases the data is a year or two older.

Donald Trump is now seriously arguing that the FDA deliberately withheld trial data from their COVID-19 vaccine until after the election.

"The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later – As I’ve said all along!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325962203346972678

The real story is:

Global COVID-19 cases hit 50 million; 1.25 million dead.

The rate is now over 600K new infections per day, and 9K dead per day.

On September 17 I pointed out that global cases of the coronavirus-19 pandemic had reached 30 million.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159396674065955

On August 10 we had hit 20,000,000 cases.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159291022025955

It has to be said that Victoria, AU, has managed something quite impressive.