Day 108 - #COVID19 in Iran
Picking up from yesterday
About Me:
[Current Outlook]
Getting dire. As one could predict (and I did two weeks ago), deaths follow cases with a 2-4 wks latency. And today official deaths climb over 100 for the 1st time in two months. And now 8 provinces in status red, last week was just one.
The process for defining status Red is opaque and prolly not very scientific since provinces keep come in and out of it. But today these provinces are red (sorry 7, not 8):
- Khuzestan
- Hormozgan
- Bushehr
- Sistan
- Kurdistan
- Kermanshah
- W Azerbaijan
isna.ir/news/990325159…
But out of 31 provinces almost all Red or show a rising trend (so matter of time before they become red) except:
- Semnan
- Razavi Khorasan
- S Khorasan
- Charmahal
- Gilan
So RISING TREND in 26 provinces out of 31... where are we heading??
Short:
- Officials in Kerman worried but expect a tough autumn (not summer)
- Reports that 57% of Golestan province population had COVID - that does not seem right. It has not lead to Herd Immunity either, trend is rising there.
- Death of two kids in Torbat-e-Jaam due to COVID
#IMPORTANT And now we have reports from Khuzestan that they have actually run out of hospital beds in Abadan (earlier we had reports of hospitals just full of COVID patients). They are now short of 300 beds in this city of 231K population.
Dr. Zali in Tehran is reporting that social distancing observance is down from 62% to only 11% and warning that we could go back to the lockdown if this trend continues. Surely the hot season has not helped as thought earlier.
Have not seen collapsed cases for some time but this one is from Friday:
OK, everyday my thread has one non-COVID topic. Some days fires, some days locust attacks, others suicide, etc.
Today it is about the drop in the growth of population which has worried the Supreme Leader immensely.
He is on the belief that so much of the power of a nation comes from its population, both economically and also so that they can join the army and fight. And in many occasions in the past 5 years he has stressed the strategy of rising population.
But the growth keeps dropping.
Now it is at lowest ever: <1%. And it is predicted to reach 0 in 10-15 years.
This has raised all sorts of alarm bells and officials are going out of their way to somehow stop the trend in accordance with the Supreme Leader.
isna.ir/news/990322142…
Head of the Centre for the Passive Defence Strategies, an ex-IRGC colonel, has raised the alarm bells saying this is not just a social problem, it is a political and economical problem.
Iran's population over the last 40 years, after the revolution, has jumped from ~32M to ~82M. Considering the economy is mainly based on selling oil and Iran's oil export has been on the decline over the last few decades (with the growing internal need), people have got poorer.
They just cannot afford to have more children. They cannot even get married, number of marriages have fallen by 40% just in 10 years. And divorces have rocketed due to economical (and social) factors.
dw.com/fa-ir/%D8%A2%D…
But the solution... well how about stop giving free condoms, pills etc to reduce unwanted pregnancies?
Yes, this is their solution. They have stopped such services for family control.
And this MP is saying due to low population growth, IQ of the average Iranian has reached 68 from 104!
What a bullock! I think IQ has dropped slightly due to record level brain drain, but 68 is actually down syndrome level. Yes, she is an actual MP.
There you are.
Stay safe and have a good night.
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