Even with vaccines widely and freely available, the country has lost more lives to the virus this year than in 2020 due to the more contagious Delta variant and people refusing to get inoculated against COVID-19.

Since the start of the year, over 450,000 people in the United States have died after contracting COVID-19, or 57% of all U.S. deaths from the illness since the pandemic started.

The deaths this year were mostly in unvaccinated patients, health experts say. Deaths have increased despite advances in caring for COVID patients and new treatment options such as monoclonal antibodies.

It took 111 days for U.S. deaths to jump from 600,000 to 700,000, according to Reuters analysis. The next 100,000 deaths took just 73 days.

Other countries have lost far fewer lives per capita in the past 11 months, according to the Reuters analysis.

Among the Group of Seven (G7) wealthiest nations, the United States ranks the worst in terms of per capita deaths from COVID-19 between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, according to the Reuters analysis.

The death rate in the United States was more than three times higher than in neighboring Canada and 11 times more than Japan.

Even when the United States is compared with a larger pool of wealthy countries with access to vaccines, it ranks near the bottom. Among the 38 members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks 30th. Only Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia Colombia, Poland and Slovenia had more COVID-19 deaths per capita. New Zealand had the least.

When compared with the European Union, the United States has 1.3 times the per capita deaths reported in the last 11 months than the entire bloc.

Among more than 200 nations and territories tracked by Reuters, the United States ranks 36th.

The United States has the highest number of reported total COVID-19 deaths in the world, followed by Brazil and India, according to the Reuters tally. With just 4% of the world’s population, the country accounts for about 14% of all reported COVID-19 deaths and 19% of cases worldwide. The country is set to soon surpass 50 million cases.

New infections in the United States were averaging around 120,000 a day, with Michigan contributing the most cases a day. COVID-19 patients were filling Michigan hospitals at record levels, with three out of four of them unvaccinated, according to Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA).

Scientists are still evaluating the impact of the new Omicron variant and whether vaccines could provide adequate protection against it.

‘Must Act Together’

The Delta variant remains the dominant version of the virus in the United States.

Of the 10 states that reported the most deaths per capita in the last 11 months, eight were from the country’s south – Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia, according to the Reuters analysis.

Roughly 60% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, CDC data showed.

Fears of the new variant have prompted Americans to line up for booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines at a record pace. Just under a million people a day received booster doses of one of the three authorized vaccines last week, the highest rate since regulators gave the nod to additional shots.

“We must act together in this moment to address the impact of the current cases we are seeing, which are largely Delta, and to prepare ourselves for the possibility of more Omicron,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing on Tuesday.

The city of Zahedan has transformed into a ghost town.

Iran has faced a new wave of the COVID-19 epidemic with the mutated virus known as the Delta, killing at an alarming rate, especially in Sistan Baluchestan province.

Most countries worldwide have managed to control the spread of the virus with widespread vaccination and have decreased the number of deaths to a minimum. The news worldwide also suggests the easing of the restrictions and gradual return to everyday life.

According to reliable sources, the death toll from the COVID-19 in Iran has reached 323,000 so far, but the government, covering the actual death toll, has announced that less than a quarter of this number, i.e. about 85,000 people.

However, in an interview with Arman Melli newspaper on June 28, Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, one of the regime’s health experts, admitted that more than 300,000 people have died of the virus so far.

Moinuddin Saeedi, a member of Iran’s parliament from the city of Chahar Bahar in Sistan Baluchestan province (one of the poorest and under-developed provinces in Iran), told ILNA (State–run media) that a catastrophe would be felt in every sense of the word if measures were not taken to curb the virus in the province.

He said there was only one 196-bed hospital in the region for a population of more than 800,000. The hospital lacks the requirements to fight the disease.

Malek Fazeli, a representative of the city of Saravan in the parliament, also said that Saravan, with a population of 480,000, has only one hospital and no ward for COVID-19 patients.

He added, “The city has only one infectious disease specialist, who is also the head of the hospital”.

According to the Sunni Friday Imam of Saravan, “the city’s hospital does not have an infectious disease doctor. The Nurses are visiting the Coronavirus patients. The hospital is not ventilated, and 8 out of 10 Corona tests are positive”.

10 cities of this province do not have hospitals at all. Due to the far distances between cities, it is very difficult to transfer patients to even the nearest hospital.

Although there are many suspected cases of Coronavirus in this province, the government does not reveal the real numbers and the numbers announced are unrealistic, because many patients in rural areas die from this disease without being included in the statistics.

The Delgan city hospital does not have a CT scan machine. If someone wants to have a lung CT, they have to travel about 150 kilometres to the city of Iranshahr, which is very difficult considering the conditions of this province and the cost involved.

The people of this province are advised not to leave their homes, and the banks and offices have been closed. However, the people of many areas, such as Chabahar and even the capital of Zahedan province, have to buy water and other essential food items from the market and have to leave their homes.

About 25% of the people of Zahedan do not have access to clean water. More than 400 villages in Chabahar do not have drinking water. In the whole province, more than 2500 villages do not have a water supply network at all.

The city of Zahedan has transformed into a ghost town.

Murad Ghasemi, an employee of a medical center in Zahedan, lost his wife some time ago due to the pandemic. “There are no vacant hospital beds in the city of Takht. Everyone is confused and frustrated. There is a severe shortage of equipment, from latex gloves to injectable serums. For example, in Imam Ali (AS) Hospital in Zahedan, there are no latex gloves and 5 cc sampling and injection syringes. Surgical gloves are sold for 15,000 Tomans (Iran’s currency) in pharmacies. Remedicor medicine could not be found at all, and hospitals have no access to any medicine. My wife’s symptoms started with fever and diarrhea.

“At first, we thought she had heat exhaustion, but her symptoms got worse. By the day when she arrived at the hospital, a CT scan revealed that more than 80 percent of her lungs were infected. Now I am left with a 40-day-old baby”.

Brahui, another resident of Zahedan, says that provincial officials have not paid the slightest attention to the working class. Whether they go to work or not, the government officials are paid a fixed salary per month. Still, they never think about what I and others like me should do, waiting for a full day in the heat and returning home empty-handed and embarrassed from the family at the end of the day.

“The main custodian and responsible for controlling COVID-19 in Iran is the government”, said Naji, a member of the COVID-19 scientific committee.

During these 16 months, the Khamenei government and the Ministry of Health failed in their duties and did not succeed in controlling the disease. In my opinion, with the continuation of such behaviors, it seems this has been intentional. So far, no proper quarantine has been applied in the country.

Lack of follow-up and control of the epidemic in the country has taken a deliberate form. The people cannot wait for the mass production of domestic vaccines, and the government must provide a reliable and trustworthy vaccine as soon as possible. “Otherwise, we will lose many people”.

It should be noted that while most of the Gulf States have vaccinated more than 60% of their population and Turkey, which has a population equivalent to Iran, has vaccinated more than 55% of its population.

Due to the widespread corruption of the ruling regime, which only cares about its own survival and does not care about the lives of the people, Khamenei banned import of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines into Iran, and now only about 5% of the population has been vaccinated (most of them have received only the first dose). Meanwhile, the Iranian regime claims that two types of Iranian vaccines have passed the testing phase and entered mass production, and will soon be exported to other countries.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.

The coronavirus pandemic has wrought devastation on India, with 22.66 million cases and 246,116 deaths reported so far. Experts say actual numbers could be five to 10 times higher, and citizens across the country are struggling to find hospital beds, oxygen, or medicines, leaving many to die for lack of treatment. 

In the state of Gujarat in western India, some believers have been going to cow shelters once a week to cover their bodies in cow dung and urine in the hope it will boost their immunity against, or help them recover from, the coronavirus.

In Hinduism, the cow is a sacred symbol of life and the earth, and for centuries Hindus have used cow dung to clean their homes and for prayer rituals, believing it has therapeutic and antiseptic properties.

“We see … even doctors come here. Their belief is that this therapy improves their immunity and they can go and tend to patients with no fear,” said Gautam Manilal Borisa, an associate manager at a pharmaceuticals company, who said the practice helped him recover from COVID-19 last year.

He has since been a regular at the Shree Swaminarayan Gurukul Vishwavidya Pratishthanam, a school run by Hindu monks that lies just across the road from the Indian headquarters of Zydus Cadila (CADI.NS), which is developing its own COVID-19 vaccine.

As participants wait for the dung and urine mixture on their bodies to dry, they hug or honour the cows at the shelter, and practice yoga to boost energy levels. The packs are then washed off with milk or buttermilk.

Doctors and scientists in India and across the world have repeatedly warned against practising alternative treatments for COVID-19, saying they can lead to a false sense of security and complicate health problems.

“There is no concrete scientific evidence that cow dung or urine work to boost immunity against COVID-19, it is based entirely on belief,” said Dr JA Jayalal, national president at the Indian Medical Association.

“There are also health risks involved in smearing or consuming these products – other diseases can spread from the animal to humans.”

There are also concerns the practice could contribute to the spread of the virus as it involved people gathering in groups. Madhucharan Das, in charge of another cow shelter in Ahmedabad, said they were limiting the number of participants.

On Thursday Kumar cremated his mother, who died of COVID-19, in a makeshift, mass cremation facility in a parking lot adjoining a crematorium in Seemapuri in northeast Delhi.

“I ran pillar to post but every crematorium had some reason … one said it had run out of wood,” said Kumar, wearing a mask and squinting his eyes that were stinging from the smoke blowing from the burning pyres.

India recorded the world’s highest daily tally of 314,835 coronavirus infections on Thursday, with the second wave of the pandemic crushing its weak health infrastructure. In Delhi alone, where hospitals are running out of medical oxygen supplies, the daily rise is over 26,000.

People losing loved ones in the Indian capital, where 306 people have died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, are turning to makeshift facilities that are undertaking mass burials and cremations as crematoriums come under pressure.

Jitender Singh Shunty who runs a non-profit medical service, the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Sewa Dal, said as of Thursday afternoon 60 bodies had been cremated at the makeshift facility in the parking lot and 15 others were still waiting.

“No one in Delhi would have ever witnessed such a scene. Children who were 5 years old, 15 years old, 25 years old are being cremated. Newlyweds are being cremated. It’s difficult to watch,” said a teary-eyed Shunty.

Shunty, dressed in protective gear and a bright yellow turban, said last year during the peak of the first wave the maximum number of bodies he helped cremate in a single day was 18, while the average was eight to 10 a day.

On Tuesday, 78 bodies were cremated in that one place alone, he said.

Kumar said when his mother, a government healthcare worker, tested positive 10 days ago, the authorities could not find a hospital bed for her.

“The government is not doing anything. Only you can save your family. You are on your own,” he said.

“We are working around the clock at 100% capacity to cremate bodies on time,” Kamlesh Sailor, the president of the trust that runs the crematorium in the diamond-polishing city of Surat, told Reuters.

And with hospitals full and oxygen and medicines in short supply in an already creaky health system, several major cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.

India on Monday registered a record 273,810 new daily infections and 1,619 deaths. Its total number of cases now stands at more than 15 million, second only to the United States.

Reliable data is at the heart of any government response to the pandemic, without which planning for hospital vacancies, oxygen and medicine becomes difficult, experts say.

Government officials say the mismatch in death tallies may be caused by several factors, including over-caution.

A senior state health official said the increase in numbers of cremations had been due to bodies being cremated using COVID protocols “even if there is 0.1% probability of the person being positive”.

“In many cases, patients come to hospital in an extremely critical condition and die before they are tested, and there are instances where patients are brought dead to hospital, and we do not know if they are positive or not,” the official said.

Very Irksome

But Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said many parts of India were in “data denial”.

“Everything is so muddy,” she said. “It feels like nobody understands the situation very clearly, and that’s very irksome.”

In Surat, Gujarat’s second largest city, Sailor’s Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID protocols over the last week, far in excess of the city’s official daily COVID death toll of around 25, according to interviews with workers.

Prashant Kabrawala, trustee of Narayan Trust, which manages a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, declined to provide the number of bodies received under COVID protocols, but said cremations there had tripled in recent weeks.

“I have been regularly going to the crematorium since 1987, and been involved in its day-to-day functioning since 2005, but I haven’t seen so many dead bodies coming for cremation in all these years,” even during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1994 and floods in 2006.

Government spokesmen in Gujarat did not respond to requests for comment.

India is not the only country to have its coronavirus statistics questioned. But the testimony of workers and a growing body of academic literature suggest deaths in India are being underreported compared to other countries.

Mukherjee’s research of India’s first wave concludes that there were 11 times more infections than were reported, in line with estimates from studies in other countries. There were also between two and five times as many deaths than were reported, far in excess of global averages.

Working Day and Night

In Lucknow, capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from the largest COVID-only crematorium, Baikunthdham, shows double the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on COVID deaths for the entire city.

The figures do not take into account a second COVID-only crematorium in the city, or burials in the Muslim community that makes up a quarter of the city’s population.

Crematorium head Azad, who goes by only one name, said the number of cremations under COVID protocols had risen five-fold in recent weeks.

“We are working day and night,” he said. “The incinerators are running full time but still many people have to wait with the bodies for the last rites.”

A spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh government did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, India Today reported two crematoriums in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, 187 bodies were cremated following COVID protocols in four days this month, while the official COVID death toll stood at five.

Last week Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies leaving a single COVID-only hospital for burial in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day where government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths.

The Lancet medical journal noted last year that four Indian states making up 65% of COVID fatalities nationally each registered 100% of their coronavirus deaths.

But fewer than a quarter of deaths in India are medically certified, particularly in rural areas, meaning the true COVID death rate in many of India’s 24 other states may never be known.

“Most of the deaths are not registered so it’s impossible to do a validation calculation,” Mukherjee said.

Even some officials in Iran have opened their mouths to protest the government’s inaction…

More than 80 countries have already ordered 7 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines, including poor countries such as Ecuador, Panama, and Afghanistan, and even Venezuela, which is facing a severe financial crisis, has ordered the vaccine. Some countries, including in the Persian Gulf, have started public vaccination, but the Iranian regime has not taken any action to purchase or order the coronavirus vaccine.

The question is what is the problem and why? even though Iran is one of the countries with the highest number of victims of the coronavirus and according to reliable sources more than 190,000 people have lost their lives so far.

The Iranian government has not taken any action to buy the coronavirus vaccine to prevent the massacre of Iranians? In recent weeks, the death toll has risen to nearly 500 each day, according to the regime itself.

Even economically, daily delay in procuring the vaccine is causing great damage to the Iranian economy, as the state media of “Donyaye Eghtessad” (meaning world of economy) wrote on Sunday, December 20th: Studies show that at worst $ 48 billion and at best $ 32 billion is the cost to economy due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

While the cost of vaccination of the entire population of Iran is estimated to be 5 billion dollars at most which shows the benefit of buying the vaccine is much greater than the economic loss …

This situation has reached a point where even some officials in Iran have opened their mouths to protest the government’s inaction. For example, Mostafa Moeen, head of the Immunology, Asthma and Allergy Research Center at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, said: “The most effective and decisive way to build herd immunity and end the killing of homeless people is timely vaccination, which must be purchased as soon as possible.”

But why does the mullahs’ regime not buy the coronavirus vaccine and what are its tricks?!

This question can also be seen in Iran’s newspapers.

The state-run “Mardom Salary” newspaper under the header of “Criticism of officials’ response to Corona vaccine” wrote:
“Iran, unlike all countries that have lined up to buy these two types of vaccines; Has made another decision.

In recent weeks, there have been conflicting views on the problems with vaccine purchases, such as “lack of sufficient foreign funds resources”, “impossibility of currency transfer”, “sanctions”, “lack of proper transportation” and so on. . . “.

Hamdeli newspaper on December 23rd wrote in an article titled “From the officials’ excuses and people’s demands about the fight against coronavirus”:

“Despite the production of the Moderna vaccine and the easier access to it, both in terms of price and portability, Iranian officials are still eyeing the production of a vaccine that is to be made in Iran this winter and will reach the public injection stage next spring.

This six-month promise is made by health officials as time passes quickly, and the coronavirus is killing more people every day and makes their families mourn.”
Obviously, the victims of coronavirus are not just “numbers”, they are human and have families. they were born one day amidst the laughter of their families and relatives, and had “souls”, felt “pain”, laughter, and joy as well as, of course, loved life. Facilitating their deaths under no pretext is justifiable because every death conceals a painful catastrophe.

Buying a coronavirus vaccine without wasting time is a public demand. Especially now that coronavirus has shown a more violent face and due to its mutation, its infection progression has increased 70 times. People on social media, especially Twitter, have passed the public’s demand by launching # “Buy Vaccine”.

It seems that the Iranian regime, like its other social problems, is at an impasse due to internal conflicts in purchasing the coronavirus vaccine.

On the one hand, by not signing the FATA agreement, it will not be able to transfer money. On the other hand, if it signs the FATA, its path of financial aid and money laundering for its terrorist and proxy forces will be blocked!

Meanwhile, since the IRGC mafia has direct control over all affairs in Iran under Khamenei’s direct supervision, many believe that vaccines were not bought because of the IRGC’s intervention, which seeks to use the coronavirus outbreak as a means to prevent rallies and protests.

Because they know very well that if there is room for assembly and If the people’s protests start, a much worse situation will occur than in November 2019 for them, which just in 3 days more than 100 cities engulfed in mass protest and many government buildings set to fire by people and the IRGC only by shooting directly at people and killing more than 1500 of them managed to suppress the protests.

But this time they may not be able to control these protests and general uprising, may lead to change of the entire regime in Iran.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator.

While rats, reptiles and insects are often eaten by families in rural areas

After the first wave of coronavirus hit Myanmar in March, 36-year-old Ma Suu closed her salad stall and pawned her jewelry and gold to buy food to eat.

During the second wave, when the government issued a stay-home order in September for Yangon, Ma Suu shut her stall again and sold her clothes, plates and pots.

With nothing left to sell, her husband, an out of work construction labourer, has resorted to hunting for food in the open drains by the slum where they live on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city.

“People are eating rats and snakes,” Ma Suu said through tears. “Without an income, they need to eat like that to feed their children.”

They live in Hlaing Thar Yar, one of Yangon’s poorest neighborhoods, where residents shine flashlights in the undergrowth behind their homes, looking for some night creature to stave off their hunger.

While rats, reptiles and insects are often eaten by families in rural areas, people in some urban areas are now being reduced to getting nutrition however they can.

With more than 40,000 cases and 1,000 deaths, Myanmar is facing one of Southeast Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, and the lockdown in Yangon has left hundreds of thousands of people, like Ma Suu, without work and precious little support.

Local administrator Nay Min Tun said in his part of Hlaing Thar Yar 40% of households had received aid but many workplaces were shut and people had become more desperate.

Myat Min Thu, the ruling party lawmaker for the area, said government aid and private donations was being distributed but acknowledged not everyone could be covered.

The crisis has cast a shadow over a general election planned for Nov. 8, though Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is still expected to win by a comfortable margin.

Nothing but the Market

Even before the pandemic, a third of Myanmar’s 53 million people were considered “highly vulnerable” to falling into poverty, despite recent gains following the country’s emergence from decades of ruinous isolation under the military junta.

The financial squeeze now threatens to plunge many back into poverty or squash their chances of getting out.

Poverty in the developing East Asia and Pacific region is set to rise for the first time in 20 years due to COVID-19, the World Bank said in September, with about 38 million expected to remain in or be pushed back into poverty.

Myanmar’s government has offered poor households a one-off food package and three cash grants of $15 each as part of its relief plan, but families say it falls far short.

A survey by ONow Myanmar of more than 2,000 people across the country in April found 70% had stopped working and a quarter had taken out loans for food, medicine, and other essentials.

Sectors driving industralisation in Myanmar – including garment work and tourism – have come to a halt while remittances have dried up, said Gerard Mccarthy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore.

“Households already in dire debt from paying for medical treatment, schooling, sustaining the elderly and everyday survival…many will need to pay off these loans before they can begin spending on anything discretionary,” he said.

Thant Myint-U, a Myanmar historian, rued the absence of a proper social safety net and the collapse of villages’ traditional welfare systems.

“For tens of millions of Myanmar’s poor, there is nothing other than the market, which in the good times provides opportunities for informal work in the cities or migration abroad but during a downturn is leaving the poorest with little more than the shirt on their backs,” he said.