It's the End of the World As We Know It, and Americans Feel Fine
What does hope mean in the middle of a fast-spreading pandemic that has caused nearly 1.4 million global deaths over the last year? In the past few weeks, we finally got a taste of it: hope is multiple vaccines that appear to be more than 90% effective. It is the approval of new treatments. And for many in the U.S., it is the victory of a President-elect who spends more time listening to scientists and less time on Twitter.
But as we approach the colder winter months, it is crucial that people don’t allow this new sense of hope to mutate into something insidious: denial. For all the reasons to be a bit more hopeful this week, there’s also a major reason to be more careful: COVID-19 cases are surging across the U.S. The country passed 250,000 deaths from the virus today, and yesterday, set a new record for hospitalizations, 79,410, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
As my colleague Jamie Ducharme writes in this week’s magazine cover story, many Americans seem to be all-too-willing to ignore just how quickly the pandemic is escalating, and what’s at stake. She notes that almost 40% of Americans are planning to gather for Thanksgiving with 10 or more people, according to an Ohio State University poll, and that 980,000 people passed through airport checkpoints on Nov. 15—quadruple the number from six months earlier, when COVID-19 was far less widespread than it is now.
If Americans continue to live out the fantasy that the pandemic is going in the right direction, the coming weeks could be the most dangerous period of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States yet. As we approach the holidays in the coming weeks, the key may be to learn the difference between being in denial, and living in the spirit of hope. Smaller, more cautious gatherings and wearing face masks are a meager sacrifice when you remember what they’re for: ensuring that other Americans will still be with us to enjoy a world unshackled by COVID-19.
More than 56 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 1.3 million people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Nov. 18, there were 623,420 new cases and 11,115 new deaths confirmed globally. Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here is every country with over 800,000 confirmed cases:
The head of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, said today that there are signs that measures to slow the spread of the virus in Europe are taking effect: 1.8 million cases of COVID-19 were reported across the region last week, down from 2 million the week before. However, Kluge emphasized that people still have a long way to go: one person is dying every 17 seconds from the virus on the continent. “I do see, and we all should see, light at the end of the tunnel, but it will be six tough months,” he said.
The African continent has reached 2 million reported cases of COVID-19, or about 4% of the world’s total, according to the Associated Press. Over the past 28 days, 19 of the 47 countries covered by WHO’s Africa office have reported a 20% or higher increase in new daily cases. The trends are particularly bad in Northern Africa, where the weather is getting colder, according to the WHO. The Middle East, a region which includes some North African countries, may be facing mass deaths from COVID-19 if countries fail to tighten restrictions and enforce rules to keep the virus from spreading, warned Ahmed al-Mandhari, the director of WHO in the eastern Mediterranean, who called for action to “prevent this tragic premonition from becoming a reality.”
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 11.5 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 250,520 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Nov. 18, there were 170,161 new cases and 1,848 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
The country’s leading health organizations have mounted a concerted effort this week to ask Americans to help curb the spread of the pandemic, especially ahead of the holidays. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans today to forgo Thanksgiving travel this year, encouraging people to celebrate with those they live with instead. Three of the nation’s leading medical associations, including the American Medical Association, released a letter today asking Americans to scale back their Thanksgiving celebrations to reduce the spread of cases amongst the surge. “We must protect the doctors, nurses and other caregivers who have tirelessly battled this virus for months,” the letter said. About 100 of the best-known hospital groups in the U.S. also published a new campaigntoday in leading newspapers reminding Americans to keep their masks on in public places, wash their hands and keep at least six feet apart from each other.
The number of new jobless claims in the U.S. rose for the first time in weeks amid spiking COVID-19 cases, according to data released by the Department of Labor today. The number of claims increased to 742,000 during the week ending Nov. 14, a hike of 31,000 claims from the previous week.
A second crisis is gripping the nation’s long-term care facilities: neglect. More than 90,000 long-term care residents have died during the COVID-19 pandemic, but for every two patients that died of COVID-19, another died prematurely from other causes, according an Associated Press analysis undertaken by University of California, San Francisco nursing-home expert Stephen Kaye. Kaye found that residences with worse COVID-19 outbreaks also experienced more deaths from other causes.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Nov. 19, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Big Tobacco Is Smoking Hot
The CDC says smoking might make people more vulnerable to severe COVID-19 symptoms, but the pandemic has been a major boon to the tobacco industry regardless, Reuters reports. Major tobacco companies have increased their sales and profit targets as smokers say that the anxiety, boredom and stress of the outbreak has nudged them to smoke more. Read more here.
New York City's Mass Graveyard
Many New Yorkers who died of the coronavirus have been buried at the city’s storied mass graveyard on Hart Island, long the final resting place for the city’s poor, mentally ill, and those without people to claim them. This summer, my colleague W.J. Hennigan traveled to the island to observe the retrieval and reburial of a woman who died during the city's first surge. Read more here.
Italian Doctors Are Burning Out
As cases in Italy are once again spiking, the country’s doctors are under enormous strain, caused in part by a shortage of health care workers and baseless claims that they are to blame for the epidemic's economic fallout. Read more here.
Risks Rise, But Hazard Pay Doesn’t
Business is booming for some retail companies, including Amazon, Walmart and grocery chain Kroeger, but retail workers aren’t being given the same raises and bonuses they received at the start of the pandemic, even though they’re taking on greater risks as cases rise, the New York Times reports. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Tara Law and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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