Not to Ruin the Saturday Night Social, but the Pandemic's Getting Worse

Debbie Downer wasn’t able to sign the necessary G/O Media paperwork to get started as a freelancer in time for tonight’s Saturday Night Social blog, what with her being a fictional character from like 20 years ago and all, but don’t worry—here’s me! Reminding you amidst all the Joe Biden victory celebrations that the coronavirus pandemic is still really bad and, if anything, only getting worse.

The United States reported over 1,140 covid-related deaths on Friday, according to CNN, marking the fourth consecutive day with more than 1,000 deaths per day—something that hasn’t happened since August. Friday also set a new record for daily infections for the third day in a row, per The New York Times, with the U.S. reporting over 132,000 new cases on Friday. More than a third of all states set statewide records for daily new cases, demonstrating how the pandemic’s latest surge is not regionalized, as previous ones were, but truly nationwide.

There have been 234,264 covid-related deaths in the U.S. since the pandemic began by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s count, with over 9.5 million total cases. An influential model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine predicted last month that as many as 400,000 Americans will have died by Feb. 1, less than two weeks after Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris are expected to be sworn in. Here’s hoping that, unlike their predecessors, they’ll actually do something meaningful to stop all this needless death and suffering.