“Book of Mormon” at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 2015
Good day. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,425th day of the pandemic.
IN MEMORIAM
Jewish Boy Who Became Nazi Mascot Dies of Covid
The story of Alex Kurzem is so remarkable that, when I first heard about it, I was not sure how plausible it was. At that time, however, I did not know that Mr. Kurzem had died from Covid.
In brief, in Minsk during the Second World War, a mother tells her six-year-old son that soldiers are coming to their home to kill them the next morning and that the family will die together. But the little boy does not wish to die. Under cover of darkness, he runs away from home and hides in the Belarussian forest, where he sees the entire town being slaughtered, including his mother and Chana, along with his brother, Duvid. His father, Solomon Galperin, miraculously escaped and joined partisans.
Miraculously, Ilya, the name the boy was born with, survived. He was adopted by Latvian soldiers who were acting as National Socialist Germany’s enforcers, and the actions they took indicate they might have known that Ilya was Jewish. Mr. Kurzem later said that one of his early captors told him to keep that aspect of his life secret. He was given a new name – Uldis Kurzemniek – and a new birthday, the 18th of November, in honor of Latvia’s day of independence. He was also given a tiny uniform, sawed-off shotgun, and new identification papers.
The blond, blue-eyed boy did as he was told but he witnessed horror after horror.
“Inside I was crying rivers of tears,” he recalled later in an interview, adding that he “would have gone with the devil if he had taken me by the hand.”
As the tide turned against Germany, the young Mr. Kurzem was adopted by a middle-class family in Riga that later moved to Melbourne. All that he took with him were his new identity papers, a tattered leather suitcase that contained several photos of him in uniform during the war, and a deeply scarred psyche.
As with many Holocaust survivors, Mr. Kurzem turned off his memories and feelings, almost in the manner of the song from the musical “Book of Mormon, to wit:
Turn it off, light a light switch
Just go click. It’s a neat little Mormon trick.
Eventually, Mr. Kurzem began to talk about what had happened, his son Mark (now deceased) wrote about his father’s story, and the Australian Special Broadcasting Service is presenting a documentary, “Hitler’s Little Soldier,” starting on February 8.
Mr. Kurzem, however, didn’t live to see this. He died of complications from SARS-CoV-2 on January 31, 2022 in Melbourne at the age of 88.
LONG COVID
The recent shortening of the isolation period by California health officials for those who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 will lead to more cases of Long Covid, two researchers wrote in an op-ed in the Merced Sun-Star, a daily broadsheet newspaper printed in Merced, California.
The researchers, Julia Moore Vogel, a Long Covid patient-researcher at Scripps Research and the Patient Led Research Collaborative, and Alison Cohen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco and an affiliated researcher with the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, make a clear case as to why the change is not only ill-advised but dangerous in that it will lead to more, not fewer, individuals missing work or school and be counterproductive because there will be more infections and, hence, more cases of Long Covid, and encourage public health officials in the state to “do better.”
UNITED STATES
Two women Tatiana Benjamin, also known as Ta Banks, or Lyric Muvaa who defrauded a New York City program known as the Hotel Room Isolation Program to the tune of $400,000 were sentenced last week.
The program offered free hotel rooms to help those with SARS-CoV-2 isolate.
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who was the presiding judge who oversaw the recent case pitting E. Jean Carroll v. Donald Trump, in which the former was awarded $83 million in damages for defaming her in statements denying that he had raped her, sentenced Benjamin to one year of imprisonment plus three years of supervised release, and Heaven West to time served plus three years of supervised release.
As a condition of sentencing, Benjamin was ordered to pay $51,088 in forfeiture plus $294,624 in restitution, while West was ordered to pay $23,684 in forfeiture and $59,644 in restitution. A third defendant, Chanette Lewis, is scheduled for sentencing in the coming week and a fourth defendant, Tatiana Daniel, is also awaiting sentencing, officials said.
Officials said Benjamin, Daniel and Lewis each pleaded guilty in late 2022. They faced as much as 20 years imprisonment.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, February 4.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 702.72 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.03 million in the last 48 hours, and 6.98 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 673.62 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.07 million in the past 48 hours.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls as well as the occasional downward or upward adjustment as corrections to case figures warrant.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Sunday at press time is 22,119,648, a decrease of 34,000 in the past 48 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,083,451, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 36,197, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 16 months.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Sunday, recorded 110.86 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.2 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45.03 million, and a reported death toll of 533,451.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July 2022, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with 40.14 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.81 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 709,407, has recorded 38.34 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are South Korea, with 34.57 million cases, as number six; Japan, with 33.8 million cases placing it in the number seven slot; and Italy, with 26.71 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.89 million, and Russia, with 23.88 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending January 27, 2022, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on February 2, 2024 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 6.3%, and the trend in test positivity is -4.6% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 2%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -11%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 22,636, a figure that is down 10.9% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 3.6%, a figure is virtually unchanged over the past week.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.57 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 28,308 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.7% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE. The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
☏ 844 LONGCOV (844 566-4268)
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
All Rights Reserved Travel