The United States has now surpassed 12 million COVID-19 cases. According to Johns Hopkins University, as of this writing, there have been 12,044,934 cases of COVID-19 in the United States along with 255,541 deaths. This represents a mortality rate of 2.1%.
It took all of six days to go from 11 million to 12 million COVID-19 cases. To quote the late Yogi Berra this is case of deja vu all over again because it took six days to go from 10 to 11 million cases. With Thanksgiving arriving in five days from now and millions of Americans planning to travel despite pleas from the CDC to the contrary the pace of cases is bound to accelerate. The news of possible vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna is of cold comfort so long as the virus proliferates at breakneck speed resulting in shortages of both hospital beds and hospital staff.
Of course, the COVID surge is hardly confined to the United States. In Canada, Toronto and a portion of the surrounding Peel region went into lockdown yesterday for four weeks. Although Canada has been experiencing a COVID surge over the past month or so it has just over 325,000 cases as of this writing (325,711).
To put that number in perspective, Canada has more than 100,000 fewer COVID-19 cases than all of Georgia (which is currently at 440,591) with nearly four times the population. There are 10.6 million people living in Georgia as compared to just over 38 million people in Canada.
Even more starkly, the United States has had nearly three times as many new COVID-19 cases in the past six days as all of Canada has had since recording its first case in late January. It bears worth repeating. The U.S. has recorded nearly three times as many COVID-19 cases in the past six days than Canada has had in nearly 10 months.
And it appears things are going to get much worse.
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