COVID waning in the public’s attention – Potential upsurge this coming winter – A Proud Boys member pleads guilty – Evening statistics
COVID has been mentioned with decreasing frequency in this journal, reflecting its status in the news headlines at large. The President has already declared that the pandemic is over; the CDC, while not going so far as to endorse this, is basically behaving as if special measures are no longer needed. It will no longer issue daily updates of new COVID cases and deaths; on October 20th it will switch to issuing to weekly updates instead. Many individual states and, for that matter, individual counties, have been providing weekly rather than daily updates for some time.
But aren’t we being just a trifle over-optimistic? Winter will be coming in a couple of months, and during the previous two winters both case incidence and mortality rates went up dramatically. COVID cases are rising on the other side of the Atlantic even now. In the U.K., the number of COVID cases this week went up nearly 11% over the number of cases during the preceding week. The newer variants up to this point have been less deadly than their predecessors, but they still have a higher mortality rate than that of influenza. The influx of cold weather and reduced outdoor activity has the potential of generating a new upsurge of deaths. I would be delighted to be proved wrong.
Jeremy Bertino, a North Carolina leader of the Proud Boys, is now the first member of that group to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy for attacking the Capitol. Bertino actually was not present at that event, having been wounded during a previous rally (a violent one, naturally) nearly a month earlier, but he helped to orchestrate the event and recruited others to participate. His sentencing date has not been set. His next hearing is scheduled for February, 2023, and during the interim he will not be permitted to hold a passport or have access to a firearm. Whether this measure will be effectively carried out remains to be seen. When Enrique Tarrio, for whom Bertino acted as lieutenant, was arrested in March 2021, a search conducted of Bertino’s house discovered six firearms, including an AR-15 rifle with a scope, and more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, despite the fact that. Bertino had previously been convicted of a felony and was (supposedly) not allowed to own a firearm even then.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 625,278,152; # of deaths worldwide: 6,556,879; # of cases U.S.: 98,465,522; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,087,274. In two weeks it will be a waste of effort to track statistics on a daily basis – see above.