Pfizer announced yesterday that their initial COVID-19 vaccine trial showed it was 90 percent effective, and that's great, but they also said they only expect to have enough doses to cover about 15 percent of the country by next spring if the vaccine is approved for use. The bottom line is the average American won't receive a vaccine until next summer at the earliest and possibly not until next fall or winter.
The coronavirus pandemic is going to be with us for a long time to come and, unfortunately, the completely disinterested Trump regime will be with us for at least another two months.
Although he is the head of the White House coronavirus task force, and although the pandemic is now overwhelming hospital systems and morgues, Mike Pence is heading to Florida for vacation.
Vice President Mike Pence is planning to travel to Sanibel, Florida, on Tuesday -- a regular vacation spot for his family -- as President Donald Trump fights to try to reverse his re-election defeat, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Federal Aviation Administration placed a VIP flight restriction zone on the Florida island from Tuesday to Saturday. Pence is the VIP, the person said, and intends to travel to the island on Tuesday.
Coronavirus hospitalizations reached an all-time record high of over 59,000 yesterday. Over 130,000 infections were also recorded Monday marking six days in a row of over 100,000 infections.
Some experts are saying we could be headed for over 200,000 infections in single day in the near future.
"We are watching cases increase substantially in this country far beyond, I think, what most people ever thought could happen," Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday. Osterholm has been named a member of President-elect Joe Biden's Transition Covid-19 Advisory Board.
"It will not surprise me if in the next weeks we see over 200,000 new cases a day," he added.
I infer that we're going to hit a test ceiling at some point soon, but in any case the hospitalizations and deaths are going to pile up even if we surpass testing capacity.
Hypothetically, if cases spike to 200,000 right around Thanksgiving, then as many as 2,000 people could die each day on or before Christmas.
I haven't been on a real vacation since 2010, but it's not something I think about a whole lot. Mike Pence apparently felt the urgent need to take a vacation right now when the need for someone to take responsibility is greater than ever. He couldn't wait another two months.
It's not lost on me that the coronavirus task force never did anything anyway. You might say that, materially, it doesn't matter what Pence does now since he never did anything before.
The sociopaths who make up the Trump regime are going to have 300,000 deaths on their watch by the end of the year, but none of them even care. They've never cared. I haven't attended church since I was about 8 years old and I feel more holy than these indifferent murderers-in-cloth.