The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 162 (662)

Living in the country means water from a well which means there is a pump dependent upon electricity to remain functional. Once the power goes out, the number of toilet flushes possible plummets as does the supply of drinking water not to mention water that can be heated to make coffee. We were lucky this time around. Son #1 never lost power in town and was able to bring hot coffee in the morning and large containers of water for flushing toilets beginning to smell like porta-a-potties. Power went out about 10:00 Monday morning and returned Wednesday afternoon about 3:00. How the power grids are laid out here is not at all predictable. We have friends living just a bit more than a mile away who have been told they will not have power until Monday. We've also been told there will be more snow falling tonight. Fingers crossed that it is not the wet heavy kind of snow that on Monday took down all the trees that took down all the power cables. 

I followed a bit of pandemic news on my phone, but did not want to run the phone's battery too far down since that was my line to the world outside not to mention the assisted living facility in which my mom lives. I also did not want to type anything lengthy using the phone's keyboard. The more things changed in three days, the more they stayed the same. 

Particularly noticeable this morning was an article about the growing numbers of pediatric covid cases. In the week ending December 23, there were over 325,000 new pediatric cases, a 64 percent increase over the previous week and double the week before that. With the increase in cases, more children are being admitted to hospitals. As of January 2, an average of 672 children were being hospitalized every day, double the average of a week earlier. Keep in mind that children under the age of five are unvaccinated and not by choice. 

A doctor at a children's medical center in Indiana reported that over half the children they have hospitalized have had to spend time in intensive care with at least 40 percent of those needing to have been put on ventilators. Comments, descriptions, and quotes from doctors or officials in other states include New York, kid rates have quadrupled; Washington, DC, kid rates have doubled; Texas, "staggering;" Alabama, "like a rocket ship;" Louisiana, "we've never seen anything like it;" and Ohio, "we're on fire." There was a similar surge in pediatric cases in South Africa, far surpassing those in earlier waves. 

On January 5, there were 716,824 new cases, a 94.8 percent increase over seven days. There were 119,548 people in hospitals and 21,210 people in ICUs. The hospitalization figure is on its way to surpass the figure from early January 2021 when there were no readily available vaccines. The numbers from cases per 100,000 people don't look very good either. Only Maine was showing a decline; cases there were down 16 percent from the previous week. New Jersey showed an increase of 239 percent. Other states with per capita cases increasing over 150 percent were New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Florida, and Louisiana. 

Nothing but numbers! In other coronavirus news, the CDC has approved booster vaccinations for chilren between the ages of 12 and 17 at least five months after their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna or two months after their dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Vaccination rates among children continue to lag, though. Only nine percent of children ages five to 11 have been vaccinated, along with 51 percent of those ages 12 to 15. Tennis player Novak Djokovic thought he had a medical exemption from tennis officials and the state of Victoria to compete in the Australian Open starting in a bit more than a week. The federal government canceled his visa when he arrived, saying that the medical exemption he had been granted was not official. He is currently spending time in a quarantine hotel room while his representatives contest his possible deportation.