but there is good news.
Now that the elections are done, and holiday travel has ceased, numbers of new cases are on the decline.
Hallelujah!
Consider where the 7-day sums of new cases of COVID-plagued people were at the beginning of December compared to this date in January.
Looking at the lefthand area of the graph, post-Thanksgiving had Texas in the lead, then Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Tennessee was briefly ahead of Georgia - until that run-off election nonsense - with Oklahoma, Alabama, and Louisiana clustered together at the bottom.
Mind, 'clustered together at the bottom' still meant they had more than 20,000 new cases per week, which means almost 3,000 new cases daily.
I also want to point out that around the middle of December, there were several states that all had 70,000 to 80,000 new cases over a week's time. Those states were Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Tennessee.
Texas and Florida continued to reach new heights in terms of folks infected by SARS-CoV-2, only showing a decline in the last three weeks.
(The same trend is found for California, though that state's data has been omitted. With weekly sums of new cases at almost 300,000 - yes, that's right, more than 40,000 people per day infected by the coronavirus - its data curve so skews the range that the trends of the other states cannot be determined.)
So, now, more than two weeks after the holidays, and more than two weeks after the conclusion of the Senate race in the Peach State, what can be said of this data?
Well, for starters, all of the curves are showing a decline for the past two weeks.
That is very good news.
It is especially good news considering that the two-part vaccination against the coronavirus is estimated to go well into the summer months.
That means we all need to continue wearing clean masks, frequently washing our hands, and walking our pack of alligators when out in public.
Sigh.
After all, even though the numbers of new cases has declined, they are still ludicrous in several states.
I will be avoiding Texas (still more than 120,000 new infections per week), Florida (still around 80,000 newly sick with COVID per week), and California (more than 150,000 new folks that didn't follow the three simple rules).
As for Georgia, which still has almost 50,000 new cases per week - which means more than 7,000 new ones daily - I'm hoping for the best, especially as it's my state of residence.
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma, please continue the declines...please.
Let's all try to be more like the fine example set by Michigan.
Sure, two months ago it was the third-highest in COVID infections, boasting 60,000 new cases per week.
But just look at it now: barely over 14,000 new cases per week, roughly one-fourth what it had at the start of December.
Their governor is doing the right thing.
I challenge other governors to do the same.
You hear me, Brian Kemp?
1 comment:
Well, here's a sad note: on fb, there is a group for YOUNG widows and widowers of spouses dead from COVID.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55805695
Very sad.
Most of these young widows and widowers are in their 30's and 40's, with young children to now raise alone.
This story, from a 39-year-old widow with young children, is an example of someone forced to start a new life, with no real time to grieve. (Note: her husband died of lung cancer several years ago, but this is still pertinent.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55304874
Post a Comment