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COVID Cases "Rounding the Corner"

In horse race terms, we are "off to the races."

This is one topic I don't really want to be right about, but the caseload of COVID-19 infections is exploding right now. Multiple days over 100,000 cases, 132,000 on Friday. Deaths again up for four straight days at over 1,000 each day.

Hospitalizations lag infections and deaths lag hospitalizations. The medical crisis of epic proportions will be upon us in December. Christmas 2020 will be like none other for all medical professionals. Just today I read this in a short piece from the NY Times:

"The number of hospitalizations has been sharply increasing since early October, as it has throughout the hard-hit areas of the central United States. The surge had already prompted the Texas Division of Emergency Management to create temporary medical facilities, including one at the El Paso Convention and Performing Arts center."

Just because the 2020 election has dominated the news this past week, don't think the virus has taken a break. Prepare for a "winter of discontent" that will resemble what we initially saw back in March and April. 

As for Florida, your turn in the bucket is coming ... you can't open up everything and then think you will be spared the consequences. As I used to tell my children, "You make your choices and you then must suffer the consequences." 

It is going to be bad, likely everywhere. 

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.