Try this for size: in nearly 34 months, the Covid-19 pandemic infected 630 million people worldwide and killed seven million people.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, in several unnecessary missteps, vaulted Malaysia to No. 27 on the tragic hit list: 4.8 million infected and 36,450 dead. No wonder paracetamol and cough mixtures ran out. Malaysia, thankfully, lagged far behind America.
The biggest planetary economy touted with the most technologically advanced medical care failed to stop these morbid statistics: 100 million infections and a million killed. And counting.
From the pandemic's outset, America had sufficient bulwark to quell this plague but it was undone by its president and his sycophantic political administration.
In fatal miscalculations, they dismissed the threat as a "hoax", then fumbled in curbing the spread after hospitals bulged with victims, and finally, blundered in enforcing a sound containment policy. Medical technology wasn't America's failing, incompetently chaotic leadership was.
To be fair, other countries stumbled, too, but not to the absurd degree of dysfunction in which America spiralled. All because their fanatical base hated the simple preventive measures everyone else takes for granted as subverting their all-mighty constitutional freedom.
In a telling census, American health authorities count of the Covid dead leaned heavily on those identifying as Republicans. Analyse that.
As their death toll frighteningly accelerated, the fatuous base were more obsessed with freedom to party or attend political rallies — unmasked.
America's insane death wish, exemplified also by its murderous mass shootings of its hapless youth, is mirrored in the Covid meltdown that's still murmuringly playing out.
The bipolar quarrel on the pandemic's origin lurches between one, leaked out of a China biolab, and the other, weaponised in America.
While the rhubarb fishtails, now this: the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that Covid-19 and its variants may be surging again in Europe.
People should vaccinate but the unpersuaded have persisted. WHO Europe director Hans Kluge has added caution that "this is not the time to relax". And aggravating the climacteric pandemic: seasonal influenza, loitering monkey pox and astoundingly, a thought-to-be-eradicated polio uptick.
Malaysia did better. The wearing of face mask is still religiously observed, even after masking requirements were relaxed, while other alarming diseases are inhibited.
At the pandemic's peak, Malaysians gallantly self-policed Covid-19's proliferation by queuing dutifully for vaccine shots while a small minority shunned the needle out of overblown fears, obviously lathered by global anti-vaccine conspiracies over incredulous web portals. Little so in Malaysia.
With polling day tantalisingly closing in on Nov 19 as a quiescent super-spreading event if risks are ignored, we can be assured of voters' exacting precaution: MyKad in hand, booster shots taken and masks glued on face, just to reinforce immunity.