It Took A Week For The U.S. To Add 1 Million Cases While New Zealand Locks Down After 1 New Case

The United States has now surpassed 37 million COVID-19 cases. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 37,001,792 cases with 623,277 deaths representing a mortality rate of 1.7%. 

It also only took a week to add 1 million new cases in this country after taking 9 days to go from 35 to 36 million cases. It wasn't so long ago that it took nearly 2 months to add a 1 million cases. 

Contrast this with New Zealand which went into lockdown today after one case. This annoyed the folks at The Federalist and Nigel Farage to no end. 

While the sight of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern telling people, "Don't talk to your neighbors"  can be viewed as heavy-handed, it must be remembered this was New Zealand's first COVID case in 170 days. That's almost six months. And New Zealanders would like to keep it that way especially with the Delta variant's ability to rapidly spread.

The one thing that does worry we where it concerns New Zealand is its low vaccination rate with less than 20% of its population having been fully vaccinated. Still, New Zealand has roughly the same population as Alabama, our lowest fully vaccinated state, and I'd like my chances in New Zealand better.