One is that the pandemic was bad, but it’s over. Right now, there are two dominant, optimistic narratives. It could be about six million, the formal death toll attributed to the virus, or nearly 15 million, as estimated by World Health Organization’s study of “ excess deaths” (unusually high mortality, including deaths likely resulting from COVID but not attributed to it). The loss of life was incalculable, literally: no one is sure how many people have died from COVID. While 80 percent of people living in the richest countries on earth have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, the corresponding figure for those in the poorest countries is 18 percent. Two and a half years into the COVID pandemic, the numbers are grim.
