The United States has now past 16 million COVID-19 cases. According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has recorded 16,014,839 cases of COVID-19 along with 297,501 deaths for a mortality rate of 1.9%. This country will likely top the 300,000 mark by tomorrow.
I understand there is some measure of excitement with the FDA giving emergency approval last night to the Pfizer vaccine with inoculations likely starting in a matter of days. But this does not change the fact that COVID infections have been spreading rapidly. In recent weeks, there have been a million cases every six days. Most recently we went from 14 million to 15 million cases in the space of only five days. This time it only took four days to go from 15 million to 16 million cases. At this pace, we will break 20 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States before the end of 2020. In which cases, it will only have taken 7 weeks for the number of COVID-19 cases to double from 10 million to 20 million. As it stands, we've added 6 million new COVID-19 cases in only 33 days.
It is well worth mentioning that we reached the 10 million mark on November 9th. That was the day Pfizer announced it had a vaccine which was 90% effective. The Pfizer vaccine may save lives over time, but it won't be able to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the short term. Indeed, the presence of the vaccine might make some more disinclined to wear masks and practice social distancing thereby accelerating the spread of the virus at an even greater rate than we are experiencing now. All of which will put our health care system at the brink of collapse.
So long as this country adds 1 million new cases every four, five or even six days we will not be turning the corner on COVID-19 anytime soon - vaccine or no vaccine.
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