The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 151 (651)

Still in the midst of the Christmas weekend, the number of airline flights canceled globally has passed 5,400. Over 1,000 of those have been in the US. I wonder how many people sweating out getting rescheduled ever considered flight cancellation as an side-effect of covid. The only time we've had flights canceled, it was our flight only. We weren't standing in line at the ticket counter for hours waiting to get to the head of the line only to discover all other flights going where we wanted to go had already filled up.

US hospitalizations are on the rise while remaining under the peaks hit in January. ICUs especially are strained with workers sometimes working 16-hour days for weeks on end. Many hospital workers have left citing burnout or anxiety as reasons. The ones who remain are now getting infected, with the CDC allowing health care workers to return to work after seven days instead of 10. I wonder how many workers would like those extra five days just to have a bit of a break. One thousand military health care workers are being deployed across the country to help. Of special concern, pediatric admissions are rising. As of Thursday, over 50 children under the age of five were hospitalized. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls cases in kids under the age of 18 "extremely high."

March will mark the second anniversary of the "15 Days to Slow the Spread" featuring guidelines set by the ex-president and his coronavirus task force. We could very well be seeing record numbers of caseloads by then. We are currently averaging almost 200,000 new cases daily, more than in last summer's Delta peak. The seven-day global average of cases exceeds 755,000. Will it hit one million? I would not be surprised if it did. Experts say that we are likely to see an "almighty surge" to start the new year. They also say that we will never be without covid but need to move it into the background. Looking ahead, Dr. Fauci agrees, saying, "It's conceivable that, sooner or later, ... everybody will have been infected and/or vaccinated or boosted. When you get to that point, unless you have a very bizarre variant ... that evades all protection--which would be unusual--then I think you could get to the point where you have this at a steady level." He also noted that it is "entirely conceivable" that we may need a fourth shot of vaccine. 

We are not alone in facing or being in an almighty surge. France just saw over 100,000 new cases in one day, the most since the pandemic began. Hospitalizations have doubled over the past month. Over one person in 100 in the Paris region tested positive in the past week. They are seeing surges of both Delta and Omicron. The government does not want to close schools nor do they want to do anything that would hurt their economic recovery. The percent of positive tests in Kenya has gone from one percent to over 30 percent in three weeks. In Uganda, 50 lawmakers and staff tested positive after attending sports tournament in Tanzania.

The week between Christmas and New Year's sees the release of every list that was not released between December 1 and Christmas. Lists of noted people who died usually come out before Christmas, overlooking anyone who, like Desmond Tutu, died in December. I expect this happens because at the dawn of a new year, the focus should be ahead rather than behind. This year we may even have a separate list of people who died because of covid, 2021 being the first year spent entirely with covid. We will also this week see lists of Outs and Ins and the Best of almost any medium or genre. And then there are lists of New Year's resolutions. For several (maybe more) years I have posted my new ones here along with an evaluation of how I did on the expiring ones. I'm thinking along those lines now. I recently came across the cards on which I've written my resolutions for years past starting with 2002. Looking for themes should be interesting and will likely help me set the ones to shoot for in 2022.