What's going on. All the places that were successful in keeping the pandemic at bay are now falling one after the other. After Indonesia, now Vietnam is having a huge spike, first wave there, +128% week over week growth.

67 cases accredited to the Olympic games so far despite strict entry measures. 1,387 new cases in Tokyo on Tuesday. +52% week over week growth in Japan.

Other stuff going on:

India resently had a study find that, actually amount of mortality (deaths) due to covid19, could be around 10 times higher than the reported numbers.
(they simply go undiagnosed, or not reported to officals. This is obviously worse, near poorer area's and slums ect.)

However this means that they believe the actual number of dead in india due to covid could be in the range of 3+ million
(instead of the reported 400k ish number).

Myanmar, has had a military coup, resently and is currently dealing with mass riots and civil unrest.  They have no oxygen left to give at hospitals, nor drugs to treat the covid with.... leading to many becomeing pretty angry with them, which lead to doctors going into hideing. They basically have a 55 million population country, without healthcare, right when covid is spikeing (ontop of civil unrest, ect).  Black markets, opened up for oxygen. Mostly its just going to military.
In total they have recived something like 10,000 vaccines (a country of 55m). Without any health care, covid kills alot more people, if its allowed to just sweep accross the country, you might have like 5% of the population just die off due to it.

A lot of Eastern Asian countries, China included, had to deal with an outbreak of just A-lineage SARS-CoV-2 back in early 2020 before closing their borders. A-lineage viruses without the D614G mutation had an R0 of just ~ 1.8.

The B.1 lineage that emerged in Lombardy and wreaked havoc in Italy and New York was already 50% more contagious than this, and Delta is 100% more contagious than B.1. That might help explain what is happening there. The first casualty of Delta was the illusion of control...

Makes sense given seropositivity rates of no less than 67% - 85% following the second wave in India, up from 24% - 50% by the end of 2020. That's at least a billion people infected, many of them with sub-optimal healthcare availability.

Subsaharan Africa is probably following on India's footsteps. A lot of countries there are already past the peak, even, with catastrophic outcomes to healthcare in the meantime.

I don't really understand how India or poor countries can get so punished by Covid, when they have extremely young populations. When half of your population is kids, Covid won't be doing much as opposed to half of your population being old people. In Japan, we still need a lot of old people to get vaccinated, progress is very slow despite Japan being a rich country.

Firstly, it's a myth that covid-19 isn't serious for young people; it may not be as deadly as it is to the elderly but it can still kill.

Secondly, a lot of poor countries have very large populations so there are still tens or hundreds of millions in late middle age or old age.

It doesn't really kill for young, so much so to be statistically insignificant. For example let's use the country I live in.

In Japan:

0-19: 90,000 cases, 0 Deaths 0%

20-29: 190,000 cases, 7 deaths .00003%  ~0%

30-39: 127,000 cases, 28 deaths .0002%  ~0%

40-49: 124,000 cases, 97 deaths .0007% ~0%

50-59: 110,000 cases, 318 deaths .002%

Now let's take a poor country with so many young like say Niger. 50% of the population is between 0-14, basically 0% chance of death from Corona. 48% of the population is between 14 and 64. Low chance of death for 98% of the population. 2% have a high chance of death, ie: ~450,000 people.

Meanwhile some countries with a lot of older people still need to be vaccinated like Australia, NZ, South Africa, Taiwan, etc.

A rich and technologically advanced nation like Japan isn't a good comparison point for poor countries currently being hit hard like India or Indonesia though.

A significant percentage of people in aged in their 20s, 30s, or 40s still require hospitalization, and in countries with lower standards of healthcare the associated mortality of these would be higher due to less availability and quality of treatments.

You also have more people suffering from malnutrition, pre-existing disease, and other factors that make it harder for one's body to fight off covid.

And again, big populations so still millions and millions over 50.

@Farsala Young people still get hospitalized and put on oxygen to get through. The high death toll is part because of lack of hospital care and lack of oxygen if you do manage to get into a hospital.

Also you're comparing young healthy well nourished westerners to kids growing up in poor countries, lacking sanitation and good/regular nourishment to grow a strong immune system.

You can't compare stats from rich countries with excellent health care to poor countries coping with hunger and almost no health care.
https://www.icirnigeria.org/covid-19-nigeria-lacks-sufficient-hospital-beds-in-face-of-viral-pandemic-data/

Niger sits at 0.12 hospital beds per 1,000, Japan is at over 13 beds per 1,000

I think the money is better spent improving infrastructure and securing hospital beds rather than vaccinating young people from covid. A vaccine for the flu or other deadly diseases for young people would probably be more effective.

By all means, all old people should get the covid vaccine quickly, but that should include all countries.

That's the thing though... I know a doctor personally and he has advised me not to get it.

He knows other doctors, nurses etc that are waiting too. The general consensus in their group is that it's simply too soon to know the long term effects. Vaccines usual take a substantial longer time to develop and this one has been fast tracked for... well, obvious reasons. Could be as bad or worse as covid's long term effects. Primary case being the AstraZenica jab with the blood clotting.

What's going to happen to people in a year or 2? 5? 

I'm not eligible yet but I might just wait. I'm not an anti vaxer, in fact I was rather keen to get it up until recently when I bumped into him at a mutual friends 30th Bday party.