Earlier today, the United States surpassed the 15 million mark with regard to COVID-19 cases. As of this writing, there have been 15,113,860 COVID-19 cases along with 285,779 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University.
It took only five days to go from 14 to 15 million cases. Over recent weeks, it has taken an average of six days to accumulate 1 million new COVID-19 cases but this has now accelerated as I suspected it would. We have only begun to feel the impact of Thanksgiving and holiday travel.
Although the mortality rate has now slipped beneath 2% (1.9%) let us consider that over these past five days more than 10,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 as we have climbed from 275,000 plus to 285,000 plus deaths in this country due to this pandemic. At this rate, by this time one week from now, we will be at or very near 300,000 deaths. That does not make for a joyous Christmas holiday.
But what of impending vaccinations in this country following vaccinations which began in Britain today. The Trump Administration's Operation Warp Speed has announced that 20 million Americans will be vaccinated by end of this year and 70 to 80% of the U.S. population by mid-May 2021. Even if this optimistic projection comes to pass millions more Americans will become sick and hundreds of thousands more will die.
Things might be better by the end of 2021 but we have yet to reach the end of 2020. Hope of relief will be offset in the immediate future with much pain, suffering, agony and death.
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