And then you begin to see how authoritarian or totalitarian regimes unfold. A common thread from my read of political thought leaders in this space like @anneapplebaum @ruthbenghiat is how authoritarianism relies in part on intellectual cover and Stanford Harvard others delivered

Many thanks @Finneganporter while i predicted some of this, a part that caught me off guard in the pandemic was the rise of contrarian intellectuals from conservative think tanks or even Harvard Stanford so desperate for relevance they aligned themselves with far right extremists

This was not far from the mark.

47/ And finally, GBD, Tucker from AIER/Brownstone, Clare Craig from HART etc are operating in Uganda to increase vax hesitancy and build the antivax movement In how many other countries are they doing the same? Heinous

46/ Good money in podcasts £30k a month good, thats part of the issue, many of them do this full time while those of us fighting for sense are working full time

45/ And of course this can easily be debunked, Davis surely must have seen the corrections fill his TL, yet its still up and being quoted by others Doesn't help those falling for conspiracy theories to have MPs spreading this crap

44/ Recently we had @DavidDavisMP getting his facts from a podcast and claiming deaths had been massively overstated

43/ Once again another Ivermectin study turns our to be junk

42/ Just America's Frontline Doctors alone are estimated to have taken in at least $15 million for consultations and alternative treatments

41/ $2.5million just from subsstack, where Nawaz from LBC is now plying his conspiracy theories

40/ And the grift is growing

39/ In the UK we see another attempt at a Proud Boys tribute act, some people really want aggressive paramilitaries on UK streets Also seeing a poliferation of "common law constables"

38/ Special shout out to Tenpenny for most insane comment of the month Quantum entanglement to steal your bank details!

37/ Of course the far right groups like the Proud Boys have joined in, starting to look like the antivax movement is being subsumed into the far right

36/ Once again its the same ecosystem of overlapping groups and narratives in the US "Defeat the Mandate" also came with a festival of fruitloops

35/ We see groups of politicians, media, astroturf, academics, the far right all coming into alignment and cooperation to undermine the pandemic effort with disinformation and political pressure on a weakened Prime Minister who only cares about his job

34/ Then we see those involved in the NHS astroturf campaign linked to the #TogetherDeclaration campaign also have far rights links, and Russian links

33/ And what a suprise Steve Baker of CRG is also in on the action

32/ Now we have a midwife as well, "I'm not antivax, but..." Also linked to the new disinformation campaign

31/ Even the Mail had some questions about him

30/ We have the "I'm not antivax but..." NHS guy who Javid spoke to quickly being handed a platform and given prominence by the disinformation groups/campaigns

29/ We also have new astroturf organisation and campaigns not just against mandates but also putting out a lot of disinformation

28/ We even end up with articles encouraging us to speed the spread of covid

28/ Now there's another one on children which they are all quoting as "incredibly robust", its not rare, no need for measures A look at the issues with this study

27/ In the UK we have Munro, Ladhani and Dingwall minimising long covid

26/ Some in the BBC also responsible for trying to normalise preventable deaths

26/ We saw the usual ppl trying to minimise the scale of the Omicron wave by blaming testing

25/ And Molly Kingsley of UsForThem also at it in the Mail

24/ Other examples Misuse of statistics on lockdown harms to children, just as the urgency of normality have done No suprise to see Lucy Johnson at it

23/ Just look how Sunetra Gupta was silenced last week by writing an article in the Telegraph that reached a large audience. She now says herd immunity means constant reinfection, thats how we protect the vulnerable

22/But remember its the GBD who see themselves as the martyrs of the pandemic, forge about their meetings with politicians, their support from swathes of the RW media, their the ones being silenced

21/ The CRG and the APPG sponsored by the GBDs Collateral Global fill the media with disinformation on a daily basis The APPGs recent attempts to halt vaccination of under 16s shows how far they've embraced the ideology

20/ Issue is that its Bhattacharya who the CRG MPs currently quoting as they oppose all measures in schools, calling for masks to be completely banned

19/ More time and effort has been spent on gaslighting to keep measures out of schools than any other aspect of the pandemic It is after all the key part of a pro-infection herd immunity strategy Great read here on Bhattacharya

18/ Appears Kulldorff has been deleted off LinkedIn

17/ What we are dealing with is not just a difference of opinion between experts, its deliberately muddying the waters and there seems to be concern that its the antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists who are lapping this up

16/ It also appears there's been manipulation o VAER to support these dredging tactics Thousand of adverse reactions reported from a single IP

15/ If you're willing to support the pro-infection agenda then it seems you'll be offered a short cut to gaining a large platform

14/ Misuse and misrepresentation of VAER is a standard tactic of antivaxxers

13/ Last year Hoeg was one of those behind the paper that dredged VAER massively inflating the risk of myocarditis from vax Turner of the Telegraph promoted it poisoning the debate on child vax in the UK

12/ More on those concerns

11/ Already seen the "toolkit" being promoted by the usual characters in the UK, must have seen the concerns raised about it but they'll carry on anyway

10/ As a full time school worker the idea we can get back to normal in the short term is a joke The "toolkit" they've produced is another example of the weaponisation of mental health to support pro infection policies

9/ In the US a load of them have teamed up for Urgency of Normality However schools can't have normality whilst policy makers and other adults accept high infection rates

8/ More examples of Ghandi

7/ Examples of how Noble, Ghandi and Prasad have undermined public health messaging

7/ Yet when caught or called out there will be clarifications and accusations of being misinterpreted and taken out of context, never contrition. Playing both sides on PH messaging doesn't work

6/ Having minimised covid harms, they find themselves playing down the benefits of vaccination For example in the US, Vinay Prasad has ended with messaging likely to increase hesitancy and embolden antivaxxers A look at an example of this

5/ There is a reoccurring theme of dividing children into "healthy" and "comordity" then dismissing concerns an individualistic approach to measures leaves vulnerable children greater risk Same vulnerable children they claim to champion when convenient

4/ These academics provide a statistical shield for policy makers to justify not taking transmission in schools seriously Their minimising of risks is also used by antivaxxers to reinforce their beliefs An example from US is Emily Oster

3/ Those minimising the impact on schools and children are an important part of the disinformation ecosystem Each country has a small group of over publicised academics fighting against all measures backed up by astroturf campaign groups

2/ As always theres been a focus in gaslighting around schools and children In the UK education is facing serious disruption due to a lack of measures so adults can pretend everythings back to normal while politicians still chase the herd immunity unicorn

#Omicron is spreading fast. WHAT CAN YOU DO? Great new animation from @VickiGSP

VACCINES Speaking of boosters, it’s not great news I’m afraid. Updated vaccine effectiveness analysis shows mRNA boosters beginning to wane from one month (week 5-9) for Omicron, and as low as 30-50% effective from 10 weeks post-booster. This effect is not seen with Delta.

The health care crisis is of governments making over three decades. Closing half general and acute beds, closing acute hospitals and community services,eviscerating public health, no service planning. Plus unevidenced policies on testing and self isolation of contacts. @dthroat

I am a full-time GP with 2 children of primary school age, one who is clinically vulnerable Unless the situation with schools changes to provide a safe place for education, I am considering a career break to home school my children @nadhimzahawi @sajidjavid @NHSEngland

It is time to discard the notion that two doses of mRNA means “fully vaccinated” It is time to discard the notion that prior SARS-CoV-2 infection means you don’t need to be vaccinated.

KEY POINT: Increasing immunity with an mRNA booster shot on top of prior infection or prior 2x mRNA vaccination confers 30x to 200x higher neutralization titers vs Omicron or PMS20

Longitudinal analyses of plasma from individuals who were vaccinated only (2x mRNA or 1x J&J) shows substantial Omicron escape

Longitudinal analyses of plasma from convalescent individuals (1m, 6m, 12m after infection) shows substantial Omicron neutralization escape

We compared Omicron to an antibody resistant spike (PMS20) that we previously designed. Omicron distribution of changes and neutralization properties are similar to PMS20. Suggests that antibody evolutionary pressure drove Omicron emergence

By Fabian Schmidt, @FraukeMuecksch, Yiska Weisblum, Justin Da Silva, Eva Bednarski, Alice Cho @VinciZijun, @c_gaebler @marinacaskey Link to full manuscript:

Not the first, but a quite comprehensive analyses of Omicron neutralization resistance with @theodora_nyc, @NussenzweigL Bottom line is fairly consistent with other mini-studies out this week, some quantitative discrepancies between groups

Claiming young people are better off getting infected than vaccinated, using this kind of language in the child vax debate probably doesn't help hesitancy

And this messaging couldn't possibly put young adults off having the jab? So why were adults with underlying health conditions prioritised around the world, and have they suffered from vaccine complications?

Have wondered about Ladhani for a while. Interesting to note he's retweeting links to UsForThem and T4recovery

What psychology can contribute to pandemic response - free symposium 15th March https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_24BAGla3R4Kqaqe5YN1qEA… New with endorsement by the @BPSOfficial Crisis, disaster and trauma psych section Please share.

Nathan Grubaugh@NathanGrubaugh·Sep 24, 2021So, yeah, @Newsweek and others, lets put the brakes on the R.1 stories. There will likely be new real threats to sound the alarms about in the future, but this ain't one of them 1650

The meat of the @Newsweek stories is that "Scientists fear the variant's mutations could lead to increased resistance to protective antibodies". I'm not buying that either. In our analysis, R.1 has only a moderate effect on antibodies. (3/4) https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.14.21260307v1

Data from GISAID and displayed on @DiseaseOutbreak shows that in the US R.1 peaked at ~1% in March-April, and there hasn't been a blip since since June. **It was last detected in the US on July 16th** So not much of a current threat. (2/4) https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?pango=R.1

Hi @Newsweek . I understand that #variant news has been slow recently with the near-complete dominance of Delta, but do you really need to go and make things up? Lineage R.1 is not a concern. Let me briefly explain why. (1/4)

RT with a better screenshot.

Americans who believe COVID vaccine misinformation tend to be more vaccine-resistant. They are also more likely to distrust the government, media, science, and medicine. That pattern is reversed with regard to trust in Fox News and Donald Trump. https://osf.io/9ua2x/ (5/7)

Our new report on #COVID vaccine misinformation trends is out. We look at shifts in beliefs across demographics and find links to trust in science, government, and media. Many who believe false claims are aware they contradict science. http://covidstates.org #fakenews (1/7)

Misinfo beliefs improve over time, but in strikingly different ways based on socioeconomic status. Ppl with high income and graduate degrees see huge drops in believing false claims, those in the lowest income and education categories see no change. https://osf.io/9ua2x/ (3/7)

After a year, we see 16% of Americans still hold vaccine misperceptions, 46% are uncertain about false vaccine claims. Misperceptions are most prevalent among age 25-44, parents, those who didn’t go to college, and Republicans. https://osf.io/9ua2x/ (2/7)

A third of the people who believe vaccine misinformation do know that it has been rejected by scientists and medical experts. And, over 20% of Americans know scientists reject some claims, but are still not sure whether to believe them. https://osf.io/9ua2x/ (4/7)

This is report #82 by our great COVID States team (http://covidstates.org): @davidlazer, @matthewabaum, @royperlis, @MauSantillana, @_Jon_Green, @klunztrujillo, @safar_a_c, @hqu, @Atauslu, @CarolinePippert, and others including off-Twitter members Jamie Druckman & Alexi Quintana

We also find the more people think they know about #COVID vaccines, the more likely they are to believe misinformation. Yes, you read that one right. People who say they are vaccine experts are overwhelmingly more likely to hold misperceptions. https://osf.io/9ua2x/ (6/7)

UKHSA tech report out - TL;DR: -BA.2 now represents >80% of omicron in England -Growth rate 80% greater relative to BA.1 per wk - regional growth seems to correlate with BA.2 frequency -?lab reports indicating that BA.1 infection may lead to lower neutralisation against BA.2

Unvaccinated people in Austria have been locked down for two-and-a-half months. I wonder if people will stop pretending they are to blame for infection rates.

A multimodal #AI study of ~54 million blood cells from Covid patients @YaleMedicine for predicting mortality risk highlights protective T cell role (not TH17), poor outcomes of granulocytes, monocytes, and has 83% accuracy https://nature.com/articles/s41587-021-01186-x… @NatureBiotech @KrishnaswamyLab

1. A thread on the CDC’s recommendation to de-isolate five days after the onset of symptoms or positive test. First, a disclosure: I was paid as a consultant for this work, done in collaboration with @Color Health, which provides COVID testing services and vaccination logistics.

BEST. VIDEO. ALL. YEAR. Please share with friends how the mRNA vaccine works to fight the coronavirus. NOTA BENE—The mRNA never interacts with your DNA . #vaccinate (Special thanks to the Vaccine Makers Project @vaccinemakers of @ChildrensPhila). #COVID19

Genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Africa focused on different regions @AfricaCDC https://bit.ly/3tcDuJl . Using Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Africa PGI) data @GISAID & @Nextstrain to visualize the emergency & spread of the new COVID-19 variant Omicron in Africa.

1. #ACIP is meeting this afternoon to discuss the recently @US_FDA authorization of Covid boosters for youths aged 12 to 15. I'll be live tweeting. The agenda is here https://cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/agenda-archive/agenda-2022-01-05-508.pdf… and the meeting can be monitored here:

Bleibt allergrößtes menschliches Rätsel für mich. Das zu wissen, und sich "aus Überzeugung", "trotzdem" nicht impfen zu lassen.

South Africa's health minister says, based on a small sample of Omicron cases, the majority of hospital patients are unvaccinated: "It indicates that the vaccines are providing protection"

Deaths by Grizzly bears each year: ~1.6 Deaths from COVID each year: ~400K. Adjust for age, all you want, his fear of Grizzly bears is irrational. His condescension and complacency about Covid, also irrational.

putting my tweets about VP's recent tweets in a short thread for convenience

is it though? it's pointless in terms of keeping omicron out, but why would it be pointless in terms of reducing mobility and contacts?

Canada gave us kindness, tolerance, poutine and hockey, and in turn we exported this awful fake health freedom movement linked to far right extremism that caused so much senseless loss of life in America , and now might do the same there. Our apologies

Das hat mich jetzt grad zum Weinen gebracht. Es tut mir so leid.

reports of Covid "parties" and resultant deaths from Austria. This presumably is a potential reason for why policy might chose to not treat recovery as equivalent to vaccination where restrictions based on status are in place (e.g., 2G,3G in Germany and Austria)

ONS Covid survey. 2% of the population +ve. "The percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 increased for all age groups, except for those in school Year 12 to those aged 34 years, where the trend was uncertain in the week ending 22 October 2021"

9.1% of secondary school aged children positive in week ending 22nd October. That is bloody awful. 1 in 11 So is 4.1% in Age 2 and primary age . About 1 in 24. That’s doubled in a couple of weeks. And parents age group Least affected are the recent vaxxed ages

If you don’t know about base rate fallacy then maybe don’t play dress up as an epidemiologist

An essential read...thank you @tylerblack32 Weirdly, relatives dying and being chronically ill has more impact than, say...

Statistics Canada has been asking kids about mental health during the pandemic. Initially, after the first 5 months (with school shutdowns, summer break, lots of restrictions), more kids said they were better than worse, most reported no change. 86% "No change or better"

And a neat region-by-region chart of COVID as primary diagnosis here.

Latest Covid primary diagnosis supplement data, by region.

3/ Have seen many asking about masks for slightly smaller face sizes— could try 3M Vflex small size

+1 for this style of chart

WAY too soon to be sure (especially w/ potential spread over holidays), but we are seeing a plateau @UCSFHospitals in hospitalizations (Fig L) & test positivity (both symptomatic & asymptomatic; R). Next few days will be key. Until we see sharp downturn, I'm in uber-careful mode.

2/ @nytimes

An unusual degree of self-awareness from the twitter sidebar.

CDC reports another study that fails to control for vaccination rate differences between mask-wearers (higher vax rate) and non-mask wearers (lower). Vaccines were highly protective vs infection (pre-Omicron), so of course the mask group has lower rates. The vaccines work.

A new @CDCMMWR study shows that people who reported always wearing masks or respirators in indoor public settings in California were less likely to test positive for #COVID19 compared with those who reported not wearing a face covering.

At this point, focus of genomic surveillance should be to identify sub-lineages of Delta bearing mutations that contribute to further transmissibility or to antigenic drift. So far, there is little signal here, but I expect such sub-lineages to emerge in the coming months. 9/9

A couple broader thoughts here: 1. I still expect Delta to sweep through the global virus population. 2. Mu's estimated transmission advantage suggests that it would have spread widely had Delta not interfered 8/9

Model results by @ftzo et al (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.07.21263228v1…) show a similar pattern with Mu viruses assigned a higher fitness than non-Delta variants (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global?branches=hide&l=scatter&scatterX=mutational_fitness&scatterY=clade_membership…). 7/9

Here, each point is an estimate for a particular state analyzed independently, so that consistency of these estimates across states gives some degree of confidence in the results. 6/9

However, Rt of Delta is substantially greater than that of Mu and if we estimate variant-specific transmission advantage relative to ancestral non-variant viruses we see that Delta > Mu > other variant viruses. 5/9

A more rigorous analysis of variant-specific Rt by @marlinfiggins that partitions @CDCgov case counts across states in the US by sequencing data from @GISAID shows that Mu was maintaining Rt > 1 in most states in July 2021 when Alpha, Beta and Gamma had dropped below 1. 4/9

In neighboring Ecuador, we see a heterogeneous mix of Alpha, Gamma, Iota, Lambda and Mu by June 2021. Delta has been successfully displacing most of this diversity since July 2021, while Mu has remained relatively stable (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/south-america?f_country=Ecuador&r=division…). 3/9

If we look within Colombia, we see Mu becoming predominant around May 2021, outcompeting other endogenous South American variants Gamma and Lambda. However, recent sequencing suggests that Delta is successfully invading on this Mu background (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/south-america?f_country=Colombia&r=division…). 2/9

I realize this is rather late to the party, but I wanted to provide a look at the prospects of Mu variant virus. I believe we can conclude that Mu appears more transmissible than all circulating variants except for Delta, but Delta is substantially fitter than Mu. 1/9

Letter to parents sent to me by a friend today …

04:19 Tegnell: 'And we do believe that part of the reason why the epidemic is slowing down here is that ... considerable part of the population is now immune, we believe.' https://youtu.be/TmuoHEtJmYA?t=246…

Tegnell, May '20 to Brazil (absolutely not the only time Sweden claimed Swedish children hadn't caught covid): 200 cases under 20. Tegnell, Jan '21, Sweden: In spring, we didn't test any children. Swedish Public Health Agency, Oct '21: 40% of Swedish children have had covid.

Tegnell states there have been very few cases among children and no spread in schools, but he leaves out they weren't testing children. They were only testing people admitted to hospital for covid. https://youtu.be/TmuoHEtJmYA?t=808…

Tegnell (10:27): 'Healthcare services have kept on functioning at a very good level. There has always been empty beds. Nobody has ever been denied treatment in any way. Everybody has received the same level of treatment they would normally do.' Not true.

7 May 2020, Brazil. Tegnell marketing Sweden's approach in his second Brazil webinar: No one has been denied care, no sick children, no re-infections, better situation than in Copenhagen & NYC that have lockdowns, no need for masks or quarantines.

Here is my earlier thread about the first webinar to Brazil: https://twitter.com/VirpiFlyg/status/1357743627930329094… There was also another Sweden-Brazil exchange webinar in May. I get to that one soon.

Swedish ambassador Johanna Brismar Skoog explains why Sweden doesn't close schools: - Based on the scientific evidence the Swedish authorities look at, children are not big contributors to the spread. They hardly get it at all themselves and they're not spreading it on.

(24:07) Anders Tegnell claims 20-30% of people in Stockholm are now (in April) immune. Next month, a study showed that 7.3% of Stockholmers had antibodies at the end of April. Tegnell commented that now in May it's above 20%. https://theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/just-7-per-cent-of-stockholm-had-covid-19-antibodies-by-end-of-april-study-sweden-coronavirus…

Tegnell (10:12): We believe in Sweden that this disease is here to stay. ... That's very much the background to what we're doing in Sweden. We're not really thinking that we ever can get rid of it in Sweden. We need to find a way to live together with it.

22 April 2020, Brazil. Experience Exchange Brazil-Sweden with Anders Tegnell and the Swedish ambassador. Their message: We have to learn to live with the virus. Sweden is doing well. Stockholm has 20-30% immunity. Children don't spread it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=TanU45Pdpwk… (in English)

(04:05): - How are your figures compared to your neighbours? Giesecke: - Higher. But one very important thing: I think we should wait a year in comparing deaths in different countries. [...] In the end, they will be about the same in each country. The situation now:

The first episode of the @thejabgab http://thejabgab.com is LIVE!! Join me and the fabulous comedians @nazeem_hussain and @calbo as they chat about the Delta variant, vaccines …. and cows? with experts @DrKGregorevic and @BedouiSammy! Search your fav platform or...

Fascinating stuff, a whole thread of people saying weird shit about me (and a poem that I've said many times was idiotic in hindsight)

2/ Anyway, know how I know that, @naomirwolf? I ASKED A ****ING SCIENTIST INSTEAD OF PROPOSING WE BUILD A SECOND SEWER SYSTEM.

mRNA is unbelievably fragile. The enzymes that degrade it are literally everywhere. That’s why they had to develop specialized lipid nanoparticles to deliver it. It would last two seconds in a sewer system. Also, it gets separated from the delivery system after it’s injected.

this is how the failure to understand what efficacy means and how it relates to outcomes will be seized on over and over again. Cookie cutter fallacies require cookie cutter clarification by machine tools to be combatted effectively (at least at current levels of moderation) https://twitter.com/TheTwatRises/status/1417160609972604937

Bump for this, from 2012.

2/2) - here's the link to online published PDF. Vaccine hesitancy is a big deal. And the ED may offer opportunities to reach vulnerable unvaccinated populations. @UPennEM @PennMedEVDCSO @CDCDirector @PennMedNews https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acem.14376…

hot off the press: our report on vaccine hesitancy in emergency department (ED) patients - first deep dive into hesitancy among this population ED is key opportunity for outreach, education ... and vaccination (1/2 - link to paper in 2nd tweet) #vaccines #vaccinehesitancy

are you really going to claim that responses to the introduction of passports on uptake across 4 other countries are evidentially entirely irrelevant to whether or not passports are justified or not?

as someone who has been trying to adapt social media for meaningful scientific exchange (see http://SciBeh.org), I will leave this by pointing out that neither attributing positions out of thin air nor calling your interlocutors views "insanely stupid" enable good dialogue

To clarify: you posted arguments against introducing vaccine passports. One was that there is a survey suggesting passports might decrease vaccine intention. I suggested that one needs to set against that the finding that vaccine uptake increased (often dramatically) 1/n

so, observational data has weaknesses- so does survey data, but it's there and we should look at it. On your second point, yes, that is important, we should study that, if we have no data we can't factor it into decision. Third is separate issue/factor to weigh.

against this survey data you might set actual uptake figures in France, various Canadian provinces, and Germany after the introduction of passports

You bring nothing to the table except brief noise and hot air. Like a very small firecracker, or maybe a vole's fart.

And perish the thought that people who turn up to bellow like water buffalo with an infected haemorrhoid don't manage to differentiate themselves between the... probably one to two hundred Σ(DMs, emails, private messages across four platforms, tweets). There's so much.

You either scream irrelevancies, suddenly demand a year of my time 'to check everything else', or just abuse me. You haven't actually read what I've written, or more importantly what anyone else has written. You just want to argue about something out of reflex.

Perish the thought I would be as peremptory as @GidMK. No, I'm going to hector, mock, or annoy those replies, THEN ask for money, THEN block you when I get bored. See, these aren't rebuttals. No-one's said anything *about the actual work*. Nothing. Not a sausage.

transparency in UK covid policy....

Latest SAGE advice to UK government SAGE minutes SPI Future evolution of SARS-COV-2 In summary, this doesn't support details coming out about the Government's "living with covid" plans

Why we should be vaccinating children over 5 much faster against Covid in the UK.

Here's a look at the frequency of BA.2 (Omicron) samples with an unusual mutation: ORF1a:M85del (NSP1:M85del). It was first noticed growing significantly in samples from Denmark. However, it is also growing in other countries - notably Sweden and the UK.

BA.1 and BA.2 prevalence by region from ONS Community Infection survey

While the current death rate in Hong Kong is startling, I think these two graphs give quite a bit of added context