Christmas miracles across the nation

Here’s pretty much the fi rst good news in the past nine months of the pandemic: Front- line health care workers are getting vaccinated.

And Congress passed legislation that will provide further fi nancial stimulus to individuals, families and businesses to help them through pandemic.

Call them Christmas miracles in that the vaccine was developed so fast and that Congress found something on which it could agree.

Even as this is being written, nurses and doctors and other critical staff ers at our Yolo County hospitals and public health system are being, or have been, vaccinated.

Early reports are few, if any, of serious reactions to the injections.

And more good news: The Moderna COVID- 19 vaccine received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on Friday and the fi rst roll outs of that vaccine were expected Monday.

Vaccine advisers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now recommending the next two priority groups — seniors over the age of 74, essential workers, and people with underlying health conditions — to receive vaccines after healthcare workers and residents of longterm care facilities. Other front line workers such as police and fi refi ghters are next as well as elected offi cials.

It will still be months before the “average citizen” will be inoculated but it’s a start.

On Sunday, Congress fi - nally came together with a $ 900 billion stimulus package that includes $ 600 stimulus checks to every taxpayer with income less than $ 75,000 in 2019, along with $ 300 in weekly unemployment benefi ts for 11 weeks, and aid for small businesses, the airline industry, more money for vaccine distribution, and other measures.

But, and there’s always a “but” in 2020 pandemic- related news, will this spending be enough? Will President Trump sign the package? Considering the job losses and business closings, this aid, while welcome, will not go that far in California, which has a higher cost of living than say Kentucky or Tennessee, but it’s something for now. The best hope is that the incoming Biden administration, still a month away from an arrival approaching at a glacial pace, vows more help will be forthcoming when they occupy the White House.

Essential next steps mean planning by both the federal and state government about how to reopen the economy, which will include how to provide proof of immunity among people who are vaccinated or who have recovered from the virus.

We’re also expecting that despite the continuing rancor and absence of leadership in the federal government, that the vaccine rollouts will be managed better than initially.

Meanwhile, Great Britain is facing a new crisis as a fastspreading new strain of the virus forced a strict lockdown across England, and as France and Germany Sunday restricted travel from Britain.

While current information suggests the new variant doesn’t have any aff ect on the vaccines being rolled out, health experts say that over time, as more mutations occur, as they always do with viruses, vaccines may need to be altered.

Federal projections say there will be enough vaccine to vaccinate 20 million people this month, 30 million in January, and 50 million in February.

Spring is months off , and the death toll continues to mount. That means in Yolo County, where the number of reported COVID- 19 deaths are 104 as of Tuesday but the active caseload is over 7,000 although 3,447 people have recovered from the most severe eff ects. The priority has to be saving as many lives as possible and that will be hard considering our ICU capacity has fallen to six beds as of Tuesday.

As we’ve noted earlier, the current holiday season is a critical juncture, with projections that tens of thousands, or more, lives could be lost as many Americans continue to ignore guidelines for preventing virus transmission.

We believe the vaccines will allow us to return, if slowly, to the lives we knew last holiday season. But until then, we all have to do our part to keep the most vulnerable among us safe.

We believe the vaccines will allow us to return, if slowly, to the lives we knew last holiday season.