© Global Look Press/Keystone Press Agency
You've probably seen the headlines about the US having the most cases of coronavirus and Russia moving into the worldwide top seven. Meanwhile, Italy receives a huge focus, but badly stricken Belgium is largely ignored.
When you read that there have been over 67,000 American deaths and over a million reported infections, it seems shocking. It also feels hugely worrying that Russia has over 145,000 diagnosed sufferers. Nevertheless, the fact is
the US is a big country, with 328 million people.
Russia is even larger, of course, but has a smaller population of 146 million. So although these figures are enormous,
they don't tell the whole story, especially given both nations have done huge amounts of tests: over 7 million in the US and more than 4.3 million across Russia.
By comparison,
Ukraine has only tested 134,592 people, according to its own government's data, and Brazil's tally is under 400,000 on the Worldometer aggregator. This information is key to understanding the real spread of coronavirus in any given country - because, like everything, it's all relative.
Comment: It's likely lost on Greta and her supporters that it is the lockdown, not the virus, that is causing such massive harm to all populations. This is basically what the UN report is saying, but it's positioned in a way that this is simply an unavoidable consequence of the 'pandemic'.