Sorry to start with a downer, but things in my country are looking really bad right now.
The UK has suffered the second-highest rate of deaths from the
coronavirus pandemic after Spain, according to excess mortality figures, say the FT number crunchers. 60,000 in total.
Not a great leveller: UK Covid deaths v housing overcrowding, by Nathaniel Barker using official stats
Owen Barder thinks we should stay in lockdown until trace and trace is up and running. His reasons are pretty persuasive .
And overall a pretty tight correlation between how late a country locks down, and how many people then die, also from the FT.
From Kenya to Bangladesh mask-making has become a thriving cottage industry
On COVID-19 (as on everything else), Africa is not a monolith: ‘It is time that North American & European academia recognizes this & ascribes to Africa and her countries the same level of granularity, nuance, and specificity that it gives itself and its countries.’ ht David Mwambari.
On a lighter note. The National Endowment for Democracy funded anti-Chavez rock bands in Venezuela and ‘USAID secretly tried to infiltrate Cuba’s hip-hop scene‘.
Staying on US, errm, exceptionalism, which USAID tagline do you prefer? I honestly didn’t believe the second one, and checked – it’s correct. Ht Eric Hansen.
