Took a while for it to get there, but India and COVID is bad

I wrote this a little over a year ago:

 And now:

And:

So, the prediction in the Science article that India might reach 300 million or more cases last year appears way out; but on the other hand, if they hit and maintain 300,000 cases a day, they are going to have a couple of million added each week.  (And also, really, how accurate are case numbers from that country, anyway?   There must be many not being diagnosed.)    Not to mention the problem of variants being spread.

And in Brazil, the news is also dire, with their local strain hitting more young people than old:

 When Covid first hit Brazil last February it was, as elsewhere, considered mainly a threat to the ageing or infirm. A year later, as Brazil grapples with by far the most traumatic phase of its epidemic, a troubling trend has emerged, as intensive care units fill with younger patients such as Castro, some seemingly battling more severe forms of the disease. An unusually high number of infant fatalities has also been reported with more than 1,000 Brazilian babies dying last year compared with 43 in the US.

Brazilians have been particularly shocked by the case of Paulo Gustavo, a 42-year-old television star who has spent the past month fighting for his life in a Rio ICU despite being previously fit and healthy. Last week, the Brazilian Association of Intensive Care Medicine said that for the first time, most Covid patients in ICU were under 40 – a finding echoed by frontline doctors.....

The explanation for the generational shift remains unclear, although some suspect a highly transmissible new variant linked to the Brazilian Amazon may be partly to blame. “It’s clearly connected to the P1 variant,” said Marcos Boulos, a infectious disease specialist from the University of São Paulo who believes the virus is now both spreading faster and hitting young people harder.

Boulos said the vaccination of older Brazilians partly explained the increasing proportion of younger patients in ICU. “But there’s no doubt young people are being [physically] more affected by this new variant. It’s unquestionable.”

“Sometimes … these young people will die after just a few hours or days with very acute, severe illnesses – and you won’t find any comorbidity or factor to explain why. It’s dramatic,” added Boulos, pointing to similar suspicions that the South African variant might be affecting the young more.

Makes me despise Adam Creighton all the more.  But just seeing his face tends to have that effect on me....