A fortunate development is that the Covid-related death rate is really retreating now:

The daily average death rate over the past months, with a 7-day moving average now at 1,856. Unfortunately still a large number, but just to keep it in fair perspective, it puts it at roughly 1% of daily death causes. Statistically, dying in a car accident (about 3,700 daily death casualties) is now about twice as likely. Furthermore, according to the latest statistics, the likelihood of dying from Covid decreases by more than 50% for people under 75, by 93% for all people below 50 and by 97.5% for people under 40.

This leads to the following risk profile for a person under 40: The risk of dying in a traffic accident is 80 times more likely than getting killed by the Covid bug.

Of course, to be precise I would have to include other factors, such as being overweight (which has another huge impact on Covid-death likelihood!), being vaccinated (that would be a tricky one 🤠) and an age-profile for traffic accidents (I assumed it to be evenly distributed but it’s probably not). However, I am already on my mathematical limits here, without opening a spreadsheet and I guess everyone gets the point.

Thinking about traffic accidents in relationship to Covid deaths makes me remember some of the scooter drivers I saw in Taiwan last year, who didn’t wear a helmet, but made it 100% sure, to put on a mask!

Talking about Taiwan… the clear winner in preventing the outbreak so far has undoubtedly been Taiwan. But just like the other “Zero-Covid” policy countries (like Australia, New Zealand and China), it doesn’t last forever. And while the numbers are globally in decline, the ‘uncherished’ Covid-bug finally seems to conquer the last standing island.

Interestingly, Taiwan is now starting to ease up its policies a bit, right in the time that the numbers are skyrocketing. Times change and so do narratives. I was in Taiwan last year at this time and people screamed after me when I was doing a midnight run without wearing a mask. Tourism was basically closed and quarantine time was 2 weeks (for some time even 3 weeks) with GPS tracking of the phone to make sure that nobody in quarantine would leave their room. Now, you can take off the mask for sports, eating and even taking pictures. Also, tourism has reopened and the quarantine time is down to 7 days, and only 3 days with a negative test.

Personally, I really hope that Taiwan will be totally let go of restrictions soon, so I feel motivated to go there again.

I genuinely miss my ‘Ilha Formosa’ (literally: beautiful island), which is how the Portuguese deservingly called it, impressed by the sight of the scenery they were facing when they first sailed by.

China now appears to be the last country that still doesn’t accept the new reality. Good luck with that.

Unfortunately, the people in Shanghai and other major cities are imprisoned and have to suffer the government’s decisions. Moreover, the already strained supply chains are further congested, leading to further global trade difficulties and upward pressure on already rising price inflation.

Here is a picture showing the congestion of cargo vessels in front of Shanghai’s ports: