Random and illustrative stories about the global pandemic and how businesses and various business sectors are trying to recover from it, with brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• The US now has had 100,279,698 total cases of the Covid-19 coronavirus, resulting in 1,103,355 deaths and 97,841,752 reported recoveries.
Globally, there have been 644,110,837 total cases, with 6,629,523 resultant fatalities and 623,021,758 reported recoveries. (Source.)
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 80.6 percent of the total US population now has received at least one dose of vaccine, with 68.7 percent. being fully vaccinated.
I haven't posted a Coronavirus Update in a couple of months, but I find it a little distressing that the vaccine numbers have not moved up very much, with a relatively small percentage having received booster shots.
• Axios reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 - serving under seven presidents, four of them Republicans and three of them Democrats - gave his last White House coronavirus briefing yesterday before retiring next month at age 81.
"My final message … is that, please for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you're eligible, to protect yourself, your family and your community," Fauci said.
I know there are folks who are glad to see him go, and who ascribe to him all sorts of malevolent motivations. But to me, Fauci is a great example of a public servant, dedicated to science, public health, and to crafting effective public policy. Without Fauci, and without policies developed in two different administrations that developed and then distributed effective vaccines, there would be a lot more casualties from the Covid-19 pandemic.
When I finally got Covid last month, I had no concerns about getting very sick, about being hospitalized, or dying. From my perspective, that is a victory for public health officials like Fauci.
