you need only listen to the first 2 minutes:

(remember the old days when people used to be jealous of the Canadian health care system?)

Joe:

and that's just the tested!

Richard Florida thread on Canada's border mess:

Ravaged by Covid, Brazil Faces a Hunger Epidemic

Tens of millions of Brazilians are facing hunger or food insecurity as the country’s Covid-19 crisis drags on, killing thousands of people every day.​

By Ernesto Londoño and Flávia Milhorance @ NYTimes.com, April 23

Photographs by Victor MoriyamaLeer en español

RIO DE JANEIRO — Rail-thin teenagers hold placards at traffic stops with the word for hunger — fome — in large print. Children, many of whom have been out of school for over a year, beg for food outside supermarkets and restaurants. Entire families huddle in flimsy encampments on sidewalks, asking for baby formula, crackers, anything.

A year into the pandemic, millions of Brazilians are going hungry.

The scenes, which have proliferated in the last months on Brazil’s streets, are stark evidence that President Jair Bolsonaro’s bet that he could protect the country’s economy by resisting public health policies intended to curb the virus has failed.

From the start of the outbreak, Brazil’s president has been skeptical of the disease’s impact, and scorned the guidance of health experts, arguing that the economic damage wrought by the lockdowns, business closures and mobility restrictions they recommended would be a bigger threat than the pandemic to the country’s weak economy.

That trade-off led to one of the world’s highest death tolls, but also foundered in its goal — to keep the country afloat.

The virus is ripping through the social fabric, setting wrenching records, while the worsening health crisis pushes businesses into bankruptcy, killing jobs and further hampering an economy that has grown little or not at all for more than six years.

Last year, emergency government cash payments helped put food on the table for millions of Brazilians — but when the money was scaled back sharply this year, with a debt crisis looming, many pantries were left bare.

About 19 million people have gone hungry over the past year — nearly twice the 10 million who did so in 2018, the most recent year for which data were available, according to the Brazilian government and a study of privation during the pandemic by a network of Brazilian researchers focused on the issue [....]

at least NOW we're better than India or Brazil, but could have been a way different story:

Michigan’s Covid Wards Are Filling Up With Younger Patients

Even as vaccines roll out, more younger people in Michigan are being hospitalized than at any other point in the pandemic. And they’re coming in sicker.

Saw because Bill Scher retweeted, he sees the political import)

Erica Chang, Motivated by the Pandemic to Help, Dies at 24

Armed with degrees in biomedicine and engineering, she wanted to administer health care. Her Covid-19 death came just five days before her father’s.

By Sam Roberts @ NYTimes.com, "Those We've Lost", April 27

Erica Chang, who was born in Flushing, Queens, graduated from Texas A&M University in 2019 with dual degrees. She was a rising star in the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers. She had contemplated a career in medicine, possibly as a doctor. But when the coronavirus struck, she decided instead to focus on how to better deliver care.

“She made the career change to become a project manager,” the society said in a statement, “seeing the need for process improvements in the health care system, especially during a pandemic.”

Ms. Chang, who lived in Katy, Texas, just west of Houston, died on April 6 of complications of Covid-19, said Khanh Vu, the chief executive and executive director of the society. She was 24.

Her parents were also infected. Her father, Chi-Kai Chang, died of the coronavirus five days later. He was 57 [....]