COVID-19 Update

World

• New Cases:   581,150 (⬆︎ 1.00%)
• New Deaths:      8,922 (⬆︎   .65%)

USA

• New Cases:   172,839 (⬆︎ 1.41%)
• New Deaths:      1,460 (⬆︎   .56%)

Over 150,000 new cases every day for 7 days in a row.

Right on schedule, about two weeks after Halloween, shit started to hit the fan, and we're in the midst of a RonaSurge® that the docs told us would happen if we weren't smart about it.

Surprise, surprise - we weren't smart about it.

And here comes Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve, so we're about to be not smart about it in a big way again - and again and again.

WaPo:

As U.S. coronavirus cases soar toward 200,000 a day, holiday travel is surging

Total coronavirus infections in the United States have topped 12 million, and cases are approaching 200,000 in a day, as health experts warn of an alarming new stage in the pandemic’s spread while Americans embark on holiday travel that could seed more outbreaks.

A fall wave of the virus ushered in by colder weather is only worsening, outpacing expansions in testing and making new nationwide records routine. The country passed 11 million cases just a week ago, and daily infections are on track to double since Nov. 4, when they exceeded 100,000 for the first time.

As Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, put it recently on MSNBC: “It’s almost exponential when you compare the curves in the spring and the curves in the summer with the inflection of the curve where we are right now."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday recommended against traveling and gathering for Thanksgiving, using its first news briefing in months to sound alarms over the massive case rise reported in the past week. The United States has surpassed a quarter-million deaths related to covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

But more than 1 million people still passed through the country’s airports Friday in the second-highest single-day rush of travelers since the start of the pandemic, even as air travel has dropped dramatically over this time last year. On the same date in 2019, more than 2.5 million people traveled through U.S. airports.

The data on Transportation Security Administration screenings shows that many Americans are heeding calls for caution. But the fallout from this week is expected to amp up pressure on hospitals and health-care workers at a critical time in the pandemic. Hospitalizations have soared to all-time highs, pushing state after state to enact new restrictions such as mask mandates, curfews and renewed business shutdowns.

“The scary news is that this week will probably have the highest amount of travel we have seen since the pandemic began,” said Christopher Worsham, a critical care physician and research fellow at Harvard Medical School.

He said he is more worried about what will happen when travelers get to their destinations — and as people from different households gather indoors, where the virus can spread more easily, often with more vulnerable older family members. Worsham said he has been hearing about people being treated as “the bad guy” for trying to keep their relatives and communities safe.

“We have to remember that the virus does not care that it is the holidays, that you are family, and that you have already gone a long time without seeing one another. If given opportunities to spread, the virus will spread,” he said.

Some passengers are facing crowded terminals as they wait to board flights. Video of busy seating areas at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport made the rounds on social media on Friday, as travelers said that the CDC’s guidance a day earlier had either not registered or made no difference in their decision-making.

“I have a life to live and things to do, so we take necessary precautions,” Curt Vurpillat, who was heading to Chicago, told news outlet AZFamily.

Crowds at Sky Harbor: The day after the CDC recommended people cancel their Thanksgiving travel plans, #azfamily viewer Ed Westerfield caught this scene of passengers waiting at their gates pic.twitter.com/r9gIhWlbek

— Max Gorden (@Max_Gorden) November 21, 2020

Brandi McRae, an IT asset and capacity manager from South Florida, told The Washington Post she was alarmed to see long security lines and tightly packed clusters of people in the corridors of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Saturday morning.

“It was a bit overwhelming,” said McRae, 31. “It was less crowded as I walked to my gate, but all I could think was that there would be very little way for so many people to remain distanced.”

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