Why This Phase of the Pandemic Feels Especially Hard
Like many people, I’ve hit a pandemic wall recently. I feel sluggish all the time, and I’ve been battling a kind of boredom and restlessness even a Netflix binge can’t satisfy. Embarrassingly, I’ve resorted to stalking myself on Instagram to remember when I used to go places and do things.
I’ve chalked up this feeling to the unfortunate collision of pandemic living and a New York City winter. But I never knew it had a name until I read my colleague Tara Law’s new piece on the “third quarter phenomenon.”
Psychologists have noticed that people tend to experience a mood shift about 75% of the way through a long period of isolation—which is roughly where we all are in our quarantines, assuming vaccine rollout continues on schedule and the U.S. continues to take precautions against a new surge in cases. This shift looks different for everyone, but lots of people get anxious, withdrawn or irritable when it feels like they’re mostly done with an isolating experience. Sound familiar?
To learn more about this phenomenon and how to overcome it, Tara talked to several people who have lived isolated lives by choice, including a scientist who oversees a Mars mission simulation program, a pair of climate-change researchers working in the Arctic Circle and a Navy submariner. They each said they’ve experienced some version of the third quarter phenomenon, and they each had fairly similar advice for pushing through it: Look for small moments of joy where you can, and remember your mission.
Of course, that’s easier to do when you’ve chosen to isolate yourself from the world. None of us asked for a devastating pandemic. But, as Tara says, “living through COVID-19 is also a novel experience, and if we think about it carefully, it also comes with a sense of mission: we need to protect our communities from the disease.”
That won’t make these upcoming months of quarantine a picnic. But a careful reframing of the task at hand may help us push through to the finish line, which gets closer every day.
More than 91.6 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, of which 68.2 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. Almost 14% of the overall U.S. population has received at least one dose, and about 6.5% of Americans have gotten both doses.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee is meeting today to discuss Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine. Earlier this week, the FDA released an encouraging report about the vaccine, concluding that the shot is about 66% effective at preventing moderate-to-severe COVID-19 and that it all but eliminated the risk of hospitalization and death among those who received it. The advisory committee is expected to recommend the shot for emergency-use authorization today—a non-binding suggestion, but one the FDA is likely to follow.
Meanwhile, the FDA has eased the temperature-storage requirements on Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, in a move that could make it easier to distribute the shot. Previously, the vaccine had to be kept so cold that facilities needed special ultra-strength freezers to store it. Now, the FDA says the shots can be safely kept at temperatures from -25°C to -15°C for up to two weeks—still quite cold, but high enough to be stored in a conventional freezer.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 113 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 2.5 million people have died. On Feb. 25, there were 447,111 new cases and 10,136 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 2 million confirmed cases:
In yet another piece of good news out of Israel, new data suggest COVID-19 vaccinations have drastically reduced the number of severe cases among elderly people. Prior to Israel’s vaccination campaign, COVID-19 patients older than 70 in the country were much more likely to require mechanical ventilation than younger patients. But now that most elderly adults in Israel are fully vaccinated the percentage of elderly COVID-19 patients who need a ventilator has fallen dramatically. That’s a tangible sign that vaccination has significantly reduced the number of severe COVID-19 cases among Israel’s most vulnerable people.
Early in the pandemic, the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China was widely assumed to be COVID-19’s breeding ground. But World Health Organization researchers in China are now investigating a second food market in Wuhan, after the first known COVID-19 patient told them his parents had shopped there, the Wall Street Journalreports. Learning more about where the virus originated could help researchers understand how it began spreading in humans and, hopefully, how to stop future outbreaks.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. recorded more than 28.4 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 508,000 people have died. On Feb. 25, there were 77,291 new cases and 2,417 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to approve President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill today, turning over its fate to the Senate. The plan includes supplemented unemployment benefits, $1,400 direct payments to many Americans and new funding for COVID-19 testing and vaccinations. The bill is unlikely to clear the Senate, however, since it contains a provision that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15, even after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that such legislation could not be passed through the relief bill. (Democrats are using a procedure called budget reconciliation, which requires only a slim majority to pass; only certain types of provisions can be included in a budget reconciliation bill, and the minimum wage increase didn’t meet that standard.) The Senate is likely to pass its own version of the plan without the minimum wage language, then send it back to the House for approval.
A new COVID-19 variant seems to have been spreading in New York City for months, raising fresh concerns about the ability of existing vaccines to stand up to the mutating virus, according to a New York Times story based on two studies that have not yet been peer-reviewed. New York City health officials pushed back strongly against the Times’ report, calling it premature.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Feb. 26, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
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WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Side of the Black Panthers You May Not Know
Though they aren’t well-known for it, the Black Panthers did valuable community health work in the 1960s and 1970s—driven, as TIME’s Olivia Waxman and Arpita Aneja explain, by Black Americans’ mistreatment by the conventional medical system. That legacy is especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more here.
Widows Are Replacing Their Husbands In Congress
Susan Wright and Julia Letlow—the spouses of late congressmen Ron Wright and Luke Letlow, both of whom died of COVID-19—are running for their husbands’ former seats, to represent Texas and Louisiana, respectively, the Wall Street Journal reports. Read more here.
COVID-19 Has ‘Muscled Aside’ the Flu
This year’s flu season has been the mildest on record, in part because so many people are masking, social distancing and staying home. But researchers think there’s another possible explanation, the Associated Press reports: Somehow, the virus that causes COVID-19 may have pushed aside the influenza virus to become the dominant circulating pathogen. 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 Jamie Ducharme and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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