Interval of calm – Evening statistics – The increasing death toll
After the events of yesterday, today was comparatively subdued. On the personal level, I took things rather easily, focusing mainly on mundane errands. In the national news, all states have certified their results and Biden’s expected electoral college vote count this coming Monday is 306, well over the number of 270 required votes as the minimum.
The most dramatic news comes from today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 69,208,167; # of deaths worldwide: 1,574,722; # of cases U.S.: 15,817,225; # of deaths; U.S.: 296,637. The death count for today was over 3,000, which is a new record. We’ve had over 2,500 deaths per day for several days running now. We are beginning to see the results of the various social gatherings during Thanksgiving; there will be worse to come as cold weather drives more people indoors most of the time and as people gather for Christmas and New Year celebrations. Our mortality rate is relatively low (about 1.8%, a little over half of those for the U.K. and Italy); therapeutic treatments have improved over the past few months and have driven this rate down substantially. But the increasingly high numbers of new cases translates into a large number of deaths all the same. The number of deaths will probably be over 500,000 by the end of January.