Friday, December 25, 2020

Global – 78,00,000/1,700,000; USA – 18,600,000/328,000 Trump at Mar-a Largo while country in crisis. Cases still surging in certain areas (see below). Relief bill in purgatory since he does not want to sign it because of disagreement about amount of relief ($600 versus $2000). Everyone had agreed to $600 even though the Dems wanted more. White House staff agreed to the bill. Sent to Trump for signature, except that now that he has finally looked at it, he wants the $2000 per person, which is what the Dems wanted to begin with, and the GOP objected to. And so now, he is bucking against his own GOP. In the meantime, people are starving without aid. Also, the USG might shut down since the Omnibus budget bill has not been signed either. Amidst all this, Trump is pardoning a large number of people (>40), almost all who were involved in the issues surrounding the probe of him and the impeachment matters. He also pardoned Gen. Flynn, Roger Stone, and Charles Kushner. Deb’s daily report: Aggressive post Holiday testing of those who gathered and rapid utilization of Mab in those at highest risk for severe outcomes will be critical over the next 2-3 weeks to blunt the impact of Holiday gatherings. Deb 1. Summarizing the current state of the pandemic : overall the USA is at a high plateau for cases and hospitalizations and due to lagging fatalities reporting in improving states we won't see the fatality plateau until the next 2 weeks 2. I summarized the top 10 states in this data summary for cases in order : CA, FL, NY, GA, PA, OH, TX, AZ, IL, IN – slides 11-20 – of these states only PA, OH, IL are improving the others are escalating or at a high plateau. 3. Data will be unstable for the next 2 weeks with both Christmas and New Years but will be tracking new admissions and rate of new admissions 4. The current pandemic state is a combination of continued improvement in the center of America and continued deterioration in CA, NV, TX, across the sunbelt and up the East Coast and including TN and WVA PRESS: Print version of Joel Achenbach’s feature on my birthday appeared in the Washington Post.