The seventh and final generation Apple iPod Touch
Good afternoon. 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 its 1,446th day and the weekend of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ birthday.
Steve Jobs, who would have been 69 on Saturday, was born on February 24, 1955, and died on October 5, 2011. He died at his home in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which resulted in respiratory arrest.
The computing entrepreneur made an unprecedented impact on the world’s consumer electronics markets with a string of unprecedented products including the Macintosh personal computer, the iPod music player, the iPhone smartphone, and the iPad tablet, which jobs described as three devices in one: an iPod with touch controls, a phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device, three distinct areas of functionality that no device at the time had managed to tackle all at once.
THE LEDE
Access to Potable Water is Essential to Good Health and Mexico City’s Water Tank is Running on Empty
Life without clean water. Sounds crazy, no? Like a fiddler on a roof. But, just like there can be a fiddler on a roof, millions and millions of people lack access to potable water – the very lifeblood of, well, life, necessary for people, animals, plants, and the ecosystem, and something that maintains life on the planet Earth. It plays a key role in many of our body’s functions, including bringing nutrients to cells, getting rid of wastes, protecting joints and organs, and maintaining body temperature.
According to UN Water, almost 3.6 million people die each year from diseases stemming from unclean water, a rate of one person every ten seconds. Most of them are children under the age of five. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that, each year, an estimated 1 .7 to 2.2 million people die from waterborne diseases.
According to the World Health Organization, unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and a lack of access to sanitation together contribute to about 88% of deaths from diarrheal diseases which include diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio, and these alone kill roughly 328,000 children each year, or 900 per day.
Most people who live in urban areas assume that a lack of clean, safe water is something that occurs on the other side of the world but there is a major city where the clean water crises is boiling over just hundreds of miles from several major U.S. cities, namely in Mexico City, which is just 692 miles (1,113 km) from San Antonio, Texas; 754 miles (1,213 km) from Austin, Texas; 1,175 miles (1,891 km) from Albuquerque, New Mexico; 1,254 miles (2,018 km) from Phoenix, Arizona; and 1,444 miles (2,324 km) from San Diego, California.
Indeed, Mexico City, one of the world’s biggest municipalities, may only be months away from running out of potable water. Already having been at risk for this for decades due to geography, a leaky infrastructure, inadequate drinking water quality and wastewater treatment, and inefficient utilities, not to mention poor urban planning, climate change has compounded the metropolis’ problem and hastened the pace at which the city will possibly run out of safe drinking water.
The three dams which supply water to the Valley of Mexico are only 30% full, Mexican outlet Excelsior reported in early February. Meanwhile, the National Water Commission estimates that Mexico City and some of the surrounding areas could run out of water by August 26 of this year if the city’s reservoirs aren’t replenished or water consumptions isn’t cut significantly.
This is of little consolation to the 57% of the population that currently lacks access to safe drinking water: That’s only five million in the city proper and 12.5 million in the Mexico City metropolitan area. When this happens, and it’s far less an “if” than a “when,” people won’t be able to get enough to drink, wash, or irrigate crops, economic decline is likely, and all hell will break loose and make SARS-CoV-2 – from which 334,958 people there died – look like a minor chest cold.
In other news we cover today, ABC will have to face a lawsuit by two “General Hospital” crew members over their dismissal over mandatory vaccine mandates on set, the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Marjorie Taylor Greene and two House colleagues over Congressional mask mandates, and the pandemic death toll in the United States was likely 16% higher than the officially reported count.
UNITED STATES
The Supreme Court turned out an appeal from Marjorie Taylor Greene and two other Republican congressmen over a suit against the mask mandate in the House of Representatives. The three – which included Tom Massie and Ralph Norman – had been fined thousands of dollars for flouting the mandate, which was then deducted from their pay checks. They then filed suit against then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Lower court decisions had said Pelosi could not be sued because courts do not have jurisdiction over Congress’ internal rules.
Lawyers for the current House speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, agreed with that decision, telling the Supreme Court, “this case is not about the wisdom of the rule or whether it was based on sound science.”
Researchers believe that the death toll was likely 16% higher than officials figures indicate. A new study led by Eugenio Paglino of the University of Pennsylvania indicates that undercounting goes beyond overloaded health systems to a lack of awareness of SARS-CoV-2 and low levels of testing.
The researchers point out that were 1.2 million excess deaths from natural causes – excluding deaths from accidents, firearms, suicide and overdoses – in the period March 2020 through August 2022. Approximately 163,000 of those deaths were not attributed to Covid in any way – but most of them should have been, the study, entitled Excess Natural-Cause Mortality in U.S. Counties and its Association with Reported Covid-19 Deaths, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says.
Drugmaker Moderna, creator of one of the two mRNA coronavirus vaccines in prominent use across the globe, reported a surprise Q4 profit. The company said that this was helped by cost cutting and deferred payments. It also set out a commercial roadmap for its vaccines in Europe and experimental RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, shots.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
A bid by television network ABC to dismiss the coronavirus vaccination wrongful termination suit filed by a father and son team who ran the construction and special effects department for the television show “General Hospital” was denied by Los Angeles Superior Court Stephen Goorvitch.
The two are accusing the network of religious discrimination in firing them for refusing to get inoculated against the virus.
The court rejected the network’s assertion of doubt that the Wahls’ objection to the vaccine was based in firm religious beliefs. ABC argued that the pair’s roles were such that they could not receive an exemption the need to comply with the industry-wide restrictions that were imposed during the first two years of the pandemic in order to allow TV and film production to resume.
The ruling comes on the heels of a similar case in which ABC prevailed. Ingo Rademacher, a German-Australian television actor who portrayed Jasper “Jax” Jacks on “General Hospital” from 1996 to 2021, lost a similar lawsuit when the court found that it would have been impossible for non-vaccinated actors to safely work on set.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, February 25.
As of Sunday, at press time, the world has recorded 703.66 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.6 million in the last 48 hours, and 6.99 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 674.4 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.04 million in the past 24 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 22,277,098, an increase of 30,000 in the past 48 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,241,429, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 35,669, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 18 months.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Sunday, recorded 111.43 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 533,478.
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 38.82 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 709,963, has recorded 38.45 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 26.72 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.9 million, and Russia, with 23.96 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending February 10, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on February 16, 2024 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 1.1%, and the trend in test positivity is -1.3% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 1.7%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -12.4%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 18,977, a figure that is down 5.7% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 2.4%, a figure that is down 11.1% in the same period.
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 3,418 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.
Anna Breuer 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.
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