Thursday, October 22nd, 2020
The day today started out feeling very much like autumn with a fog lingering over the lawn until almost noon, where after it turned into a glorious sunny and warm day. So grateful that I had booked and outdoor lap lane as I could enjoy some sun while swimming.
Since I have a call at 20:30 tonight I though I would make use of the early evening hours to do the grocery run – every time we are out of milk a shopping trip is due and today was the day. Normally I just go to one of the supermarkets in the neighborhood, but with some extra time to kill before the call I decided to venture to the newly opened Wegman’s in Tysons Corner.
EM was all excited to come along. Wegman’s happens to be our favorite supermarket, only problem is so far there has not been one within a 20 mile radius. I found the location, and of we went after I quickly noticed the status “open”. We arrived and the entrance to the parking was boarded up. There was no accessing the market. It was very strange, until we opened the page again and noticed that next to “open” it said “November 4th”, what a let down and since we were not going to hang around for the next ten days, we made our way to the local Safeway, which was rather deflating. We did get the usual assortment plus about 3 kilograms of sweets for Halloween, now EM has to build that Candy Shoot for distribution of same on Halloween.
Beyond the presidential debate scheduled for tonight and election news Corona continues to dominate the news world. Globally 41.5 million cases have been reported today. The USA is at 8.65 million setting the fourth record in new cases in as many days. For a fifth day in a row reported cases today are higher than the day before. Today this included the death toll also, which again is above 1.000/day. I believe this is all the result of Labor Day weekend and scientist believe the autumn increase is only starting. I expect further increases in reported new infections. If only a couple of GoP senators were to be infected in the next 3-5 days.
Sadly Germany, France and Poland are also reporting record numbers of new cases. Germany had managed the first outbreak extremely well, managing to contain the spread reasonably quickly. There are now voices cautioning Germany’s diverse policies could come to haunt them as there is no one national strategy. Germany, like the US and unlike other European countries, is a Federation where each State is autonomous. As a result, a nationwide Corona response needs to be agreed by all 16 governors and the federal government. Unlike the US though the German federal government is taking the lead in assembling the State governors to define one single and coherent policy nationwide policy, so I am reasonably certain the new outbreak will be contained sooner in Germany than in the US.
As cases all over Europe are increasing, with Italy reporting 15k new infections today schools have been closed and a teacher takes schools to the streets and balconies. I think that is very cool.
In the meantime China is rolling out voluntary vaccine without having completed phase trials. A key problem are the low infection rates with only 14 (!) new infections nationwide, which makes testing the efficacy of the vaccine very difficult. China has now resorted to test its vaccine in Brazil and other countries. These trials seem to suggest the vaccine is safe.
Maybe there is hope!