Current hospitalizations remain the most reliable statistic. Hospitalizations are a much better reflection of reality than the other metrics through the holiday reporting bumpiness.
What we are experiencing now is worse than last spring, and there’s worse yet to come.
LA Times:
L.A. County hospitals turn away ambulances, put patients in gift shop: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’
At Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, the breaking point came Sunday night.
There was not one available bed for at least 30 patients who needed intensive or intermediate levels of care, and the hospital had to shut its doors to all ambulance traffic for 12 hours. Some patients, including the very sick who required intensive oxygen, experienced wait times as long as 18 hours to get into the intensive care unit.
NY Times:
Trump’s Veto Threat Did Little to Alter Stimulus Package
The president’s threat to scuttle a $900 billion relief package held workers in limbo, but did little to change the bill’s outcome
As an exercise in raw presidential power, it was a flop. As a political tactic, it backfired. And as a coda to his final weeks in office, President Trump’s threat to veto a $900 billion Covid relief and government funding bill merely underscored his tumultuous tenure in the Oval Office.
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this asymmetry has persisted for years
Republicans are at once more ideologically extreme and less interested in making government work than Democrats are https://t.co/vuSGycj4qz
The officials are set to play a major role in the president-elect’s response to the worsening pandemic.
Biden has selected Bechara Choucair, a Kaiser Permanente executive, to be the nation’s Covid-19 vaccine coordinator. Choucair, a family physician who previously served as Chicago’s public health commissioner, has specialized in boosting health care access as chief health officer for Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest integrated health care delivery system.
Choucair will be Biden’s point person for expediting vaccine delivery and coordinating with state and local officials. Biden and his allies have credited the Trump administration’s effort to rush Covid-19 vaccine development through its “Operation Warp Speed” initiative but warned that the pace of rolling out shots has fallen behind the administration’s promised goals. Officials had pledged to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of the year, but the Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday said thatjust 2.1 million Americanshad received their first shot.
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What happens when a vaccination program is run as a logistics program by White House appointees with zero experience with vaccination? Doesn’t start well. Less than one fifth of vaccines shipped have been given. This should be the beginning of the end of the pandemic in the US.
Biden: Trump administration falling “far behind” on vaccine distribution
What he’s saying:“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind. Far behind,” Biden said after a briefing from his COVID-19 advisory team.
“We’re grateful to the companies, the doctors, the scientists, the researchers, the clinical trial participants, and operation warp speed for developing the vaccines quickly. But as I long feared and warned the effort to distribute the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” he added.
“We need to scale up testing so anyone who needs one can get a test. After ten months of the pandemic, we still don’t have enough testing. It’s a travesty.”
Biden said Americans can save thousands of lives “if we just step up together, wear a mask, socially distance, wash our hands, avoid large indoor gatherings.”
Tom Nichols/USA today:
Trump and 2020 nightmares are ending and COVID help is coming. It’s no time to go wobbly.
This is no time for Americans to go all wobbly. Trump is trying to unnerve the nation in order to prepare us for yet more outrages, right to the last day of his term. But the new year is in sight and victory, as it was against Iraq in 1991, is not in doubt. The worst thing that could happen is for us to give in to our fears, or to begin bickering among ourselves, when we are so close to overcoming the terrible year we are about to leave behind us.
The people of the United States have much for which to be grateful as 2020 draws to a close. Despite the utter incompetence of the Trump administration and its war on science, actual scientists around the world worked together to create a vaccine in record time and shots are already in the arms of our first responders. We have been attacked by the Russians and other malefactors before, but competent professionals are working to shore up our defenses.
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In Lee County Florida, where vaccines started as first come/first served for seniors Monday, hundreds of people in 70s & 80s slept in lawn chairs, lined up outside vaccine sites.
Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s faint and the tunnel is longer than it might appear.
We absolutely need to do everything possible to quickly get vaccines out. And in the meantime, double-down on the simple things we know save lives.https://t.co/hArJl7X0OM
