Covid has created two worlds: one still determined to deprive the virus of lives, the other striking a grim compromise.

(Originally published June 3 in “What in the World“) The world has entered a new and still very dangerous phase of the pandemic: even as Covid rages on in Latin America and elsewhere, huge population centers where infection rates are still high, such as the United States and Europe, are opening up, while smaller places with where rates are low, such as East Asia and Australia, remain battened down. Populations tired of more than a year of anti-pandemic prohibitions, mask-wearing, curfews, crowd limits, lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions are pressuring authorities to ease up. The irony is that it’s now politically easier for authorities to ease up where rates are high but falling, and very difficult politically for authorities to ease up in locations where rates are low but getting worse. That’s a great combination for Covid: the net effect is likely to be that, despite rising vaccination rates, the population of individuals exposed to the virus is likely to increase. And that buys the virus time to mutate into a more survivable form that can elude vaccines and social distancing.

Here’s a global look at where we stand in Covid vs. Humans, again courtesy of Worldometers:

As show above, the rate of new infections has dropped significantly since peaking in late-April, but remains at similar levels to where it was in late-February and still hasn’t fallen below the rate it had climbed to in October 2020. The virus is giving up some points, but it’s still winning.

This map from the Guardian gives us some sense of where the pandemic is hitting hardest:

It’s clear that Latin America is now the epicenter of the pandemic in terms of new infections. What you can’t easily see in this map are smaller places also still on the front lines of infection, including Bahrain, the Maldives, the Seychelles, and Trinidad-Tobago.

That’s just where the pandemic is worst. It’s still bad in the West, especially in parts of the world now opening up to foreign visitors in the EU: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and while it’s not in the EU, Switzerland. These countries are still seeing more than 1,000 new infections per million every two weeks. Because most Covid infections remain asymptomatic and we tend to test only those who have symptoms or those close to them, actual infection rates are likely to be several times higher than those reported. Opening up to travelers from abroad, vaccinated or not, elevates the risk that they catch or introduce a new strain that can then spread in locations like these where the case numbers illustrate how ineffective their anti-pandemic measures have been.

Travel restrictions remain toughest in countries where numbers are lowest, places such as Australia, China and New Zealand. Arguably, with new infection rates per million in low single digits, these nations could afford to ease open a bit to low-risk travelers, i.e. the vaccinated, with or without some quarantine, contact tracing controls and testing. But with low infection rates comes a low death toll, and no politician wants to be responsible for taking the decision that costs their constituents their lives. In countries where the death toll is already high, like the U.S. where 610,000 people have lost their lives to Covid but infection rates are falling, the public seems inured to the still-rising death toll and politicians can give in to pressure to ease restrictions. While roughly 25% of the American public has been vaccinated, 75% hasn’t and the nation is still racking up 21 Covid deaths per million inhabitants every fortnight. Hard-hit India is losing 35 people per million inhabitants in the same period. This is, unfortunately, likely to give Covid a chance to stage new outbreaks that lengthen the pandemic and cost many more lives, but that is the bargain these countries now appear to be prepared to make.

What’s perverse is that their continued reopening at the expense of continued infection will likely prompt countries with low infection rates and closed borders to remain that way, since they seem determined only to open to visitors from countries with similarly low incidence (Australia with New Zealand, Singapore with Hong Kong, etc.). Australia hasn’t lost a single life to Covid since mid-April. And the 910 lives lost so far to the virus represent just .0035% of the overall population. The U.S. is hailing itself victorious over Covid after losing .18% of its population to the virus. The wrong countries are opening up.