COVID-19 Update

World

• New Cases:   624,091 (⬆︎ .76%)
• New Deaths:    13,791 (⬆︎ .77%)

USA

• New Cases:   194,860 (⬆︎ .99%)
• New Deaths:      3,398 (⬆︎ .99%)

Certain percentages are staying fairly consistent.

• Overall Serious/Critical = ½% of all cases
• Overall Death Rate = 3% of all cases which have been resolved

USAmerica Inc will go over 20 million cases some time today, and over 350,000 dead in the next day or two, going on to top 400,000 dead by the middle of next month.

The World will hit 100 million cases and 2 million dead some time mid-January.

And here's the cherry on top for USAmerica Inc: 

There are approximately 100,000 Critical Care Beds staffed and available in the US. For the most part, there is a more-or-less adequate supply to meet the demand, even though we're straining the limits, especially considering the toll this fight is taking on the clinicians who spend practically every waking moment at the broken end of the bottle.

The problem - as usual - is a matter of distribution. Many hospitals are reporting they've maxed out already, and you can't just transfer an ICU bed (along with the requisite trained professionals) to Pokacuzzin County when the need arises, and transferring potentially hundreds or thousands of critical patients hundreds or thousands of miles to the nearest bed isn't even worth contemplating (because the patients require critical care en route, and if we could provide that critical care during the transfer, we wouldn't be transferring that patient in the first place).

We can helicopter some of them a couple of counties over (as they become critical, and before they absolutely require the bed), but beyond that, we have to change our thinking - the standard model (send the patient to where the care is) is about to become inoperable and we need to put that idea aside.

I don't pretend to know what we need to do. I do know that there are extraordinary people with extraordinary skill who do know how to do all of this, and the question is: Will we be able to put them in positions to help us pull it off, or will President Stoopid and Qult45 fuck this up like they've done everything else?

We're 3 weeks away from the Biden Administration, and about 10 days away from seeing the results of a Christmas Surge that could be pretty fucking epic.

A bit of good news - some people who've recovered from COVID-19 are still producing antibodies 6 months out. So post-infection immunity may turn out to be a thing.

The "new" novel coronavirus may not be such a big threat, but it bears watching cuz holy fuck, it gets around.

WaPo:

Colorado officials on Tuesday reported the first known case in the United States of a person infected with the coronavirus variant that has been circulating rapidly across much of the United Kingdom and has led to a lockdown of much of southern England.

Scientists have said the variant is more transmissible but does not make people sicker.

The Colorado case involves a man in his 20s, who is in isolation in Elbert County, about 50 miles southeast of Denver, and has no travel history, according to a tweet from the office of Gov. Jared Polis (D).

“The individual has no close contacts identified so far, but public health officials are working to identify other potential cases and contacts thorough contact tracing interviews,” the statement said.

A federal scientist familiar with the investigation said the man’s lack of known travel — in contrast with most confirmed cases outside the United Kingdom — indicates this is probably not an isolated case. “We can expect that it will be detected elsewhere,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the broader context of the announcement.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed as much in a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying additional cases with the new variant will be detected in the United States in coming days. The variant’s apparent increase in contagiousness “could lead to more cases and place greater demand on already strained health care resources,” the agency said in a statement.

Researchers have detected the more transmissible variant in at least 17 countries outside the United Kingdom, including as far away as Australia and South Korea, as of Tuesday afternoon. Officials in Canada had previously said they had identified two cases.

Although the U.K. variant appears more contagious, it is not leading to higher rates of hospitalizations or deaths, according to a report from Public Health England, a government agency. Nor is there any sign that people who were infected months ago with the coronavirus are more likely to be reinfected if exposed to the variant, according to the report. All available evidence indicates that vaccines, and immunity built up in the population, should be protective against this variant.