There's a very good chance 2021 will be a better year than 2020.
But this year begins with a stark reminder that where it concerns COVID-19 things are far from over.
Today, on the first day of 2021, the United States recorded its 20 millionth COVID-19 case. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have now been 20.074,798 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. along with 346,894 deaths. This represents a mortality rate of 1.7%.
To put this in further context the number of COVID-19 cases has doubled from 10 million to 20 million in only 53 days. It took 293 days to get from zero to 10 million cases. In other words, it took more 9 months to reach the first 10 million COVID-19 cases. It then took less than 8 weeks to add the next 10 million. How long will it be before we go from 20 million to 30 million? 40 million?
Yes, we have vaccines but they're not getting distributed. Even if the vaccines are distributed efficiently it still takes time for them to take effect. With respect to the Pfizer vaccine, it takes 12 days after the first dose and a week after the second dose. That's a good month there and then add millions of people into the equation.
It's going to take months for the vaccines to have their desired effect. Which means public health measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing must be adhered. Yet we know millions of Americans disregarded these measures during Thanksgiving, Christmas and while ringing in New Year's Eve last night. We will be paying the price for this in disease and death for many months to come.
2021 might still end up being better than 2020, but not by a lot.
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