The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 44 (544)

POTUS spoke yesterday and, while putting forth some badly needed mandates, did widen the political divide a wee bit. Top Republicans, not named in my source, are calling for a public uprising to protest the new vaccine mandates POTUS has proposed or imposed. We're already set for what I hope is not another January 6 next Saturday. I really don't want to see a second civil war added to history textbooks. The vaccine mandates proposed by POTUS would affect as many as 100 million Americans. All employers with over 100 workers would be required to have employees vaccinated. They would have to compensate employees for time taken off work to get the vaccination. Non-compliance would result in thousands of dollars in fines. Workers at medical facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments must be fully vaccinated. Finally, all employees of the executive branch as well as contractors who do business with the federal government must be vaccinated. Will this work or is it, as some health experts said, too little, too late? POTUS also wants to double the federal fines for no wearing masks on planes or on federal property. He'd also like to see entertainment venues and arenas require vaccinations or proof of a negative test.

While the above might well be too little, too late, current numbers say we have to do something and do it  strongly and soon. (I wish "soonly" were a word.) Compared to the same time last year, new cases per day are up 300 percent along with 2.5 times more hospitalizations and twice the number of deaths. Looking back 20 years, we're seeing covid deliver the death toll of 9/11/2001 every two days.Every. Two. Days. The Washington Post and The New York Times must use different sources for their daily numbers, but both are bad. The Post says there were 162,020 new cases yesterday and 3,300 deaths. The Times reports 170,460 cases and 3,231 deaths. Dr. Fauci is reminding us that to tame the pandemic, those case numbers need to get below 10,00 per day on a consistent basis. I read the following in the coronavirus checker email I get each morning from The New York Times and started to list all the people I know who have had covid (no one I know has died of it ... yet): "Since January of last year, at least 1 in 8 people who live in the United States have been infected, and at least 1 in 505 people have died."

Onto something other than numbers, I don't think The Professor would do well if he taught at the University of Delaware. There, if a student tells a professor that they had a positive covid test, the professor is not allowed to tell the rest of the class that they may have been exposed. Instead, they should tell students that "given the current incidence of Covid-19 on campus, we should assume that we may have contact with individuals who are shedding Covid-19, perhaps unknowingly." Also, the university will not tell professors if a student in one of their classes has tested positive. Professors must rely on students to tell them the student was positive with covid. That's certainly not how I'd want The Professor to be treated. Ignorance is so not bliss in this respect.