On this date, one year ago January 13, 2020 Thailand was the first country outside of China to confirm cases of the novel Coronavirus. The tiny newly discovered virus has proven to be the great disruptor of our generation.
Yesterday, the World Health Organization reported 89 million cases of COVID-19 globally. The death toll so far— 1.94 million victims.
In the U.S. there are confirmed 22 million cases and 376,000 deaths. The U.S. has been the worst affected country by far. Behind us is India and Brazil with 10.5 and 8.1 million confirmed cases, respectively.
Vaccines are rolling out, perhaps stumbling out, with shots in arms. The damage economically in the U.S. is immeasurable but clearly tops the $4 Trillion Dollars the Federal Reserve has created to offset the losses in 2020.
More stimulus is on the way in the form of newly created debt that American citizens can never afford to repay. But this is not an American problem alone.
According to the World Health Organization, the seven-day average of daily new cases hit a record high of 715,557 on Monday after new cases had surpassed 800,000 in two of the past four days.
How Europe, Asia, South America, Mexico, Russia, Africa and the rest of the world will get beyond the economic losses to the Coronavirus is uncertain. One year into the pandemic, we remain locked in, locked out, masked up, and waiting on the vaccines.
