The Pandemic Blog

Irony alert: The following blog post contains ironic statements. Regular viewers of Fox News and others without a tolerance for irony should not under any circumstance read this post. As I discussed last week , the US set an all-time record for 7-day average of daily Covid deaths – 4,775, which shattered the previous record of 4,197 from a year ago – in the week ending Feb. 13. I regret to say that we came down a little from that level in this past week, and only had a daily average of 4,543 deaths. While that’s a letdown, of course, it shows we’re still pushing forward, as we rush toward the one million deaths mark for the entire pandemic. Of course, we couldn’t have sustained this high level of deaths without the tireless work of Fox News, Gov. DeSantis, Gov. Abbott, the Canadian truckers, and a host of people too numerous to mention. Without their efforts, we’d be nowhere near the level of deaths we’re at today. Don’t stop now, folks! Keep your eye on the prize: one million d

  I was genuinely shocked when I (belatedly, I’ll admit) updated my spreadsheet with Sunday’s numbers. First, average daily new cases increased last week; they didn’t decrease. But much more shocking: the 4,775 average daily Covid deaths last week shattered the all-time record of 4,197, set the week ending Feb. 1, 2021.   Of course, I was shocked to see these numbers because I don’t think I’ve seen a single news story lately that doesn’t sound like we’ve finally turned the corner, and it will be easy street from here on. And that’s true: Other than the fact that new cases increased last week and that deaths set an all-time record, things are great! I also note that we’re marching toward 1 million Covid deaths faster than I’d thought would happen. We hit 900,000 just four weeks ago and as of today, I’m sure we’re well over 950,000. Looks like we’ll probably reach the long-desired 1 million mark by the end of March, at the latest. And don’t worry: The US already wears the crown of