Wednesday, December 30th, 2020
Today was a very quiet day. We had no plans really and EM spend the morning on schoolwork Given there is nowhere to go and nothing to do our daily outing turned into a chase for candles. To acquire a few, we had to visit for drugstores. Everyone is completely sold out! THe other chore involved taking all the cardboard for recycling. Once back at home I focused on cooking our luner (lunch and dinner in one). I had procured a fresh Pike fillet which I served with lemon oyster mushrooms and roasted Kohlrabi. Even though carb free and light I feel like I have had too much food.
Cooking was the most exciting event of the day. This will be our last evening together as EM will head to her father’s house tomorrow and will then only see her grandmother at the airport when we leave. It is very sad to think we only have 12 days left and that due to the pandemic my daughter cannot return to her grandmother’s house after staying with her father. We really need these vaccine’s to be rolled out as soon as possible so we can spend time with friends and family again and can return to visit more frequently without it being quite such a production.
At least there is more good news on the vaccine front. The AstraZeneca/ Oxford vaccine has been approved for emergency use in the UK. This means every British citizen can now be vaccinated within months. I am hoping the EU and the US will follow suit with their approvals as this would alleviate vaccine shortages and ensure everyone who would like to be vaccinated can be within the next three or so months. What a game changer, especially since AstraZeneca/ Oxford find it is effective with the most recent mutant strain.
Given the new mutant has now reached the US, or rather it is now known to have reached the US, increasing vaccine capacity becomes even more urgent. In the meantime, reports on the vaccine roll out in the US indicate that it is a single clusterfuck. The federal government has so far delivered less doses than promised, primarily because of lack of organization. Out of the 20 million shots which were supposed to have been administered by now only 1.9 million have actually been administered. Also, the current administration only delivers to central points in States, thereafter it is up to governors to deal with the distribution of the vaccines and actually getting the shots into people’s arms and so far that is most certainly not going well. As with all things Corona there is no central or agreed plan. On the contrary, States are not following CDC guidelines, with Republican states especially breaking away. Instead of vaccinating essential workers in the second cohort they are prioritizing people age 65 and above. Of course, they are screaming for reopening and economic recovery.
As long as economically active people cannot be immunized neither is likely to happen.
In the meantime the USA has added another 201k new cases over a twenty-four hour period bringing the total to 19.9million know cases out of 82.2 million worldwide.