I hope all of my readers, regardless of where you are, remain healthy and safe during these challenging times. My family, thankfully, continues to remain healthy and safe.
I was talking on here last week about how the United States had recently surpassed 400,000 deaths. Now we are approaching 425,000 deaths. Such is the rate with which people are dying. Needless to say, the new Biden administration has their work cut out in terms of trying to save lives.
In my area, the test positivity rate has upticked slightly to just over 14%. At least it’s not rising as it was around the holidays, but the rate is still concerningly high. That being said, the COVID hospitalization numbers in my area look less bleak than they did even a couple of weeks ago–the hospital closest to where I live is at 85% of overall hospital bed capacity and 79% of ICU capacity. Now, those rates are still too high for comfort, but at least these numbers are not in the 90-100% range like they were the previous couple of weeks.[1]
Needless to say, with the way the COVID situation is, I can’t help but roll my eyes with how there are murmurs of indoor dining returning to New York City. I am deeply sympathetic to the challenges that restaurants are facing financially, but I think the answer to the financial woes would be to give restaurants enough assistance to make it through the pandemic while practicing COVID precautions. I could be wrong, but I’ve heard some countries taking this approach. Unfortunately, it seems like the United States is reluctant to do the same.
The hope in turning things around, of course, lies with a combination of practicing the proper health precautions (social distancing and mask-wearing) as well as the vaccines. I reported in last week’s COVID update post about shortages of vaccines; that remains an issue. Hopefully, that will change as Biden’s COVID team gets up to speed.
[1] To find what the hospitalization statistics are for your area, go to this website and do a search for the county you live in (only applies for those in the United States): https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/944379919/new-data-reveal-which-hospitals-are-dangerously-full-is-yours#lookup
Blind Injustice 
I’m so glad you and yours remain healthy Brendan. Do you know if any of the variants have been found in NY? Hospitalizations are down in AL, but we’ve had over 600 more deaths and almost 4,000 new cases in the last day. More worrisome is that there have been 3 cases of the UK variant that have been discovered.
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I know that the UK variant has been found in NYC. Which is really not surprising, all things considered–we are a major port of entry from the UK here, so whatever was in the UK not too long ago would be in New York in no time basically.
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Reblogged this on By Hook Or By Book and commented:
Here’s the latest pandemic news from Brendan in NYC. If you’re in the US and you’re wondering what the hospitalization stats are in your area, be sure to click on the the helpful link he’s provided at the end of his post.
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Glad you all are remaining well, we are almost into our second wave of vaccine distribution. I think my husband is slated in the next round. I feel for all these businesses that are suffering as well as their employees. I don’t know if anyone has a really clear plan to help that, but at least Biden has a plan to get things moving, produce more vaccines and get them into arms. Stay well.
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I feel for the businesses as well. Many of these businesses did nothing to deserve the current situation. Hopefully, Biden will help us right this ship sooner rather than later.
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Glad that you and your family are well Brendan. Here in Southern Ontario things are slowly improving. Our numbers are heading downward in all areas. They have found the variant thought, which is scary. The lockdown seems to be working and I hope it continues longer. Vaccines are slow here as we have been hit with the slowed production from Belgium. There is a company in Canada that is also working on a vaccine, so maybe things will speed up some. Keep safe!
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I hope you keep safe too, Carla! I think I heard that vaccine distribution in Canada was at one point managing to be even slower than what’s happening in the United States (and it’s been slow here). Hopefully that has changed recently, though! And hopefully the positive trends in Southern Ontario continue.
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