America Ends the Year With Two Deadliest COVID Days in a Row, and the Worst Is Yet to Come

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/america-ends-year-with-consecutive-daily-coronavirus-death-highs-and-worst-is-yet-to-come?ref=home

America Ends the Year With Two Deadliest COVID Days in a Row, and the Worst Is Yet to Come
NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
Jamie Ross, Reporter
Published Dec. 31, 2020 4:52AM ET

It’s tempting this New Year’s Eve to celebrate the end of a terrible year—but, unfortunately, things are set to get worse before they get better. For the second day running, the United States hit a new high for daily deaths related to the coronavirus, with 3,740 people losing their lives. The figure comes from pandemic trackers at John Hopkins University, and was tallied on the same day that California identified the nation’s second confirmed case of the new and seemingly faster-spreading variant of the coronavirus, suggesting it’s more widespread than previously realized. The outlook for the start of the new year is not good—according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forecast, more than 80,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 over the next three weeks.

[genxlib]

1. Some of that is just a catch up in record keeping

The deaths always dip on weekends and holidays because agencies fall behind in reporting.

The numbers were artificially low over the long Christmas weekend so they are arbitrarily high as the reporting catches up. The same thing happened at Thanksgiving and will be even more pronounced with an extended Holiday week.

I suspect next week will show even more as the reality catches up. The numbers will settle back into their regular rhythm and we will be able to see the real trend lines.

Based on the trend lines in the new cases graph, it looks like the deaths won't peak for at least a few weeks. Maybe longer if we get the expected surge from Christmas travel and gatherings. We don't really even know if the new cases have peaked yet because of the same challenge in reporting delays.

January is going to be ugly but there is hope that things will start to head in the right direction after that. Wouldn't it be perfectly appropriate if the deaths peaked and started to recede on inauguration day

[malaise]

2. ...and the Worst Is Yet to Come

Thanks Killa Kon!
This fucker still thinks he should remain president