COVID in an assisted-living facility – Amy Barrett’s confirmation – Evening statistics
A brief entry today, with relatively little to record either about private life or the public sector. I mainly went on various tasks today, shopping for various items, obtaining emissions testing for my car, and so on. One of the errands was to visit my mother at the assisted-living facility. Despite the efforts of the administrators running the facility, some isolated cases of the virus have broken out there. All of the affected inmates have been placed under quarantine and restrictions on visits from outside have increased. My mother’s caretaker assures me that my mother does not go out at all, while her caretaker goes out only for occasional errands such as picking up medicine at the pharmacy. The opportunities for getting infected are thus relatively low, but it is disquieting. Moving my mother elsewhere at this point is not feasible (she is wheelchair-bound and barely responds to outside stimuli of any kind) and all we can do is to wait it out.
The virus has made inroads in the public sector as well. Mike Pence agreed not to preside over Amy Barrett’s confirmation hearing tonight because several members of his staff have tested positive for COVID and many attendees on both sides were concerned that his presence might expose them to greater risk of infection. In the event, his vote was not needed. The Vice President is expected to vote only if the Senate votes both pro and con are equal and a tie-breaking vote is required. In this case 52 Senators voted in favor of Barrett, and thus she has been pushed through in what must go down as the swiftest Supreme Court Judge appointment in history, a bare 30 days after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and just a week before the election. As many Democrats pointed out, the Republicans objected strongly to the nomination of Merrick Garland during Obama’s last year of administration, delaying matters for 293 days until the reins of power were held by Trump, enabling him to nominate Neil Gorsuch instead. There thus is not even a pretense of evaluating a nominee upon his or her legal qualifications; ideology appears to be the only criterion that matters.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 43,762,880; # of deaths worldwide: 1,164,191; # of cases U.S.: 8,959,931; # of deaths U.S.: 231,028.