The Shared Existential Crisis of the 2020 Pandemic
A global emergency is no time to change your life. When the world has turned upside down and your mind is in fight or flight mode, you’re well-advised not to start thinking about such big questions as whether to get married, change your job, move to a different city. Best let the chaos subside and your thoughts clear, and then start making such major choices.
That means no big decisions during the pandemic, right? Wrong. As my colleague Jamie Ducharme reports, the past year of quarantines, lockdowns and mortal rumination has led a lot of people to reassess their lives and make a lot of big choices.
A Pew Research Center poll, for example, found that, as of June, 22% of American adults had either moved because of the pandemic or knew someone who did. That trend apparently continued into the fall: About 20% more houses sold in November 2020 compared to November 2019, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The reasons include the fact that months of indoor time seems to have prompted many people to look for homes that offer more space, and those who can work from home suddenly have more freedom to move beyond the commuting distance of an office.
Then there’s romance. Jewelers are seeing double-digit increases in engagement ring sales, the Washington Postreported in December. In the 2020 installment of Match.com’s annual Singles in America report, more than half of respondents said they’re prioritizing dating and rethinking the qualities they search for in a partner, likely sparked by the complete social upheaval of this year. Ducharme writes that she herself chose 2020 to decide to share an apartment with her boyfriend—“The ‘ol quarantine move-in,” as a friend of hers joked.
The trick, says Jacqueline Gollan, a psychiatry professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who studies decision making, is leaning into the natural inclination for change without toppling over the edge. Don’t act just because you think you should, and resist the urge to make life-altering changes based solely on temporary factors, she says.
The pandemic, it’s nice to remember, is one of those temporary things. Life changes can last a lot longer.
The U.S. has fallen far behind its early targets for vaccine distribution and administration, admitted Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in an interview with CNN this morning. The Trump Administration had looked to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of December but as that deadline approaches, barely 2 million people have received the shot. Nevertheless, Fauci said that he remains confident the U.S. will catch up in January and that by spring or summer the vaccine will be available to anyone who wants it.
The disappointing vaccination totals in the U.S. appears to be due to bottlenecks not in the production of the vaccines, but in challenges in getting them from vials and into arms. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that as of yesterday morning, more than 11.4 million doses had been distributed nationwide, enough to inoculate more than 5 million Americans with the two-dose shots, as Reuters reports.
Despite doubts about the Russian Sputnik V vaccine—which was given regulatory approval in Russia this August after being tested in only a few dozen people—the shots are now being rolled out internationally, with Belarus and Argentina receiving shipments and beginning to administer them, the Associated Press reports. In both countries, medical workers and teachers are among the first who will receive the Russian vaccine. For Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, early adoption of the vaccine is something of a departure. Earlier in the year he dismissed COVID-19 fears as a “psychosis” and urged Belarusians to avoid the disease by drinking vodka and visiting saunas.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
Editor's note: On Nov. 25, Turkey changed its policy to include asymptomatic cases in its daily numbers. On Dec. 10, the country provided a large case dump to bring the total historical reporting in line with this new standard. However, the data are not yet available to accurately distribute this increase retroactively. The result is a significant anomaly that impacts the charts and maps both for Turkey, and, due to the country’s large case numbers, the world. In addition, the recent dip in daily case rates in the U.S. is more likely an artifact of institutional slowdown during a national holiday, and not representative of what’s actually happening in the country when it comes to the pandemic. Because the U.S. is suffering one of, if not the worst outbreaks in the world, this has an outsized effect on global numbers.
The Global Situation
More than 81.2 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 1.8 million people have died. On Dec. 28, there were 490,741 new cases and 9,527 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here is every country with over 1.5 million confirmed cases:
While sports teams in the U.S. continue to play before empty arenas and stadiums, life is more or less back to normal for China’s soccer fans—most notably for the ones who root for Wuhan Zall, the team that represents the city where the coronavirus first emerged, as my colleague Charlie Campbell reports . Most of Wuhan has returned to its pre-lockdown bustle, though Wuhan Zall is still not permitted to play in its home stadium. But the team—and its fans—are free to travel to other teams’ turfs to play, and those fans have responded, crowding railway stations by the thousands. “During the pandemic, everyone had to stay home and couldn’t go outside,” student Zhu Fulei, 19, told Charlie. “For months, more than half a year, we couldn’t watch any soccer matches. We felt awful.”
On Sunday, South Africa became the first nation on the African continent to reach 1 million COVID-19 cases, a development driven in part by the new, faster-transmitting strain that is now well-established in the country. In response, President Cyril Ramaphosa imposed new restrictions that went into effect yesterday and will remain in force at least until Jan. 15, the BBC reports. All indoor and outdoor gatherings are banned except for funerals and a 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew will be imposed. Alcohol sales are forbidden and failure to wear a mask in public is punishable by fines or imprisonment.
Brazil passed a new milestone yesterday when it exceeded 7.5 million coronavirus cases—the third-highest number of cases in the world after the U.S. and India. The hardest-hit state is Sao Paolo, with 1.4 million cases and nearly 46,000 deaths, according to XinhuaNet. Sao Paolo authorities are placing a ban on non-essential activities from Jan. 1 to Jan. 3, in order to avoid crowds of revelers over the New Year’s weekend. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the pandemic is raging among Brazil’s Indigenous Yanomami people, in the northeastern state of Roraima, the result of gold miners bringing the virus to native reserves.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 19.3 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 334,000 people have died. On Dec. 28, there were 168,817 new cases and 1,718 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
And here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
If you were trying to design the worst imaginable super-spreader environment for COVID-19, you couldn’t do better than prisons and jails—with uneven sanitation practices, inmates living in crowded conditions, and transport vehicles often requiring them to sit shoulder-to shoulder, shackled in place. And indeed, as my colleagues Madeline Carlisle and Josiah Bates report, there have been outbreaks at more than 850 jails and prisons in the country, putting many of the over 2 million people confined there at risk. So far, more than 275,000 inmates have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 1,700 have died. In October, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit against the federal government for its “failed response to the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and jails.”
As we are writing this, President-elect Joe Biden is addressing the nation to—according to the Washington Post—discuss the current state of the pandemic, as the U.S. braces for a likely surge on top of the current surge once the wages of Christmastime travel come due in the form of new infections. Text of the remarks has not been released, but Biden is expected to expand on his plans for his first 100 days in office, which include the distribution of 100 million vaccine doses and voluntary nationwide masking. The address comes on the same day that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received her first dose of one of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines. Biden got his first injection last week.
Hospitalization rates in the U.S. for COVID-19 reached an all-time high today, The Wall Street Journal reports, with more than 120,000 beds now filled with pandemic victims. Intensive care units are also overflowing, with 22,592 patients. And even more people are expected to be hospitalized as cases increase due to holiday travel.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Dec. 29, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
President Trump Gambled—and Lost
Political commentators may long debate just what President Trump was thinking when he threatened to veto the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill that had been passed by both houses of Congress—only to fold and sign it in the end. As a New York Times analysis concludes, it flopped as an exercise in presidential power and backfired as a political ploy. Read more here.
The COVID-19 Relief Bill Explained
The 5,000-plus page relief bill that Congress passed and President Trump just signed has left people with a lot of questions. When will jobless benefits start to flow? What about the $600 supplemental relief? How long with the moratorium on evictions last? The Hill has the answers. Read more here.
Back to Normal May Not Be Normal
The arrival of vaccines offers hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight, but the damage from the pandemic will linger in more ways than just lost lives and bankrupted families, as Ed Yong argues in The Atlantic. The health care system will be left reeling, social gaps have widened between the haves and have-nots, and “a nation that has begun to return to normal will have to decide whether to remember that normal led to this.” Read more here.
The Changing Job Landscape
One more lingering effect of the pandemic will be the reshaping of the labor market across the U.S., as The Wall Street Journal reports. Job losses at retail outlets, restaurants and bars could linger, for example, while employment has jumped at warehouses and merchandise transport businesses. 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. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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