South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
US leaves more than Afghan bases
Despite the draw down of American forces, someof the property they occupied has not been returned.
With some Americans now paying the price for what they did over Thanksgiving and falling sick with COVID-19, health officials are warning people — begging them, even — not to make the same mistake during Christmas and New Year’s.
“It’s a surge above the existing surge,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Quite honestly, it’s a warning sign for all of us.”
Across the country, contact tracers and emergency room doctors are hearing repeatedly from new coronavirus patients that they socialized over Thanksgiving with people outside their households, despite emphatic public- health warnings to stay home and keep their distance from others.
The virus was raging across the nation before Thanksgiving but was showing some signs of flattening out. It has picked up steam since, with new cases per day regularly climbing well over 200,000.
The dire outlook comes evenas the U.S. stand son the brink of a major vaccination campaign against COVID19, with the Food and Drug Administration giving the final go-ahead Friday night to use Pfizer’s formula against the scourge that has killed over 295,000 Americans and infected more than 16 million.
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed to a seven-day average of almost
2,260perday, about equal to the peak seen in mid-April, when the New York City area was under siege. New cases are running at about
195,000 a day, based on a two-week rolling average, a 16% increase from the day before Thanksgiving, according to an Associated
Press analysis.
In Washington state, contact tracers counted at least 336 people testing positive who said they attended gathering sort raveled during the Thanksgiving weekend. More are expected.
The virus could still be incubating in someone who was exposed while traveling home the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the end of that two-week incubation period is this Sunday.
Zana Cooper, a 60-yearold cancer survivor in Murrieta, California, tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Thanksgiving dinner with the family of her son’s girlfriend. At the dinner, the girlfriend’ s father, who had recently traveled to Florida, wasn’t feeling well andw ent to bed early.
Cooper learned the following Sunday that he tested positive.
“I was somad,” she said. “I was upset. Iwas angry. Iwas like, ‘How dare you takemy
life in your hands?’”
She has had fever and headaches, a runny nose and blood shot eyes, and inrecent days it has become more difficult to breathe and she has been using an inhaler. She said she believes she brought the virus home to her daughter and two grandchildren, who live with her and are now ill with what a doctor diagnosed as C OVID19.
In Philadelphia, awoman in her 20s gathered with 10 relatives on Thanksgiving, though she didn’t feel well the day before. She later tested positive for COVID
19. Her family started developing symptoms, and seven members tested positive, said Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley.
The next round of festivities could yield evenmore cases. Wall-to-wall holidays started last week. Hanukkah began Thursday evening and ends Dec. 18, followed by Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve.
“This is not the time to invite the neighbors over for dinner. This is not the time to start having parties,” said Arizona State University researcher Dr. Joshua La Baer.
In parts of New York state, contact tracers are regularly hearing from the newly infected that they attended Thanksgiving festivities, said Steuben County Public Health Director Darlene Smith. Still unknown is how many they will infect and how many eventually will need a bed in intensive care, she said.
“It’s the domino effect,” Smith said.
Harry and Ashley Neidig, of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, recently tested positive for COVID-19. They said they believe they contracted it from someone at their jobs as security officers but didn’t kno wof their possible exposure before they celebrated Thanksgiving with both sides of the family.
On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Ashley Neidig, 25, noticed she couldn’t smell a mentholscented body scrub. After the couple got tested, they contacted their families to warn them. Some were awaiting test results, and so far no one else has had any symptoms, said Harry Neidig, 24.
“We feel bad because . we definitely should’ve put a heavier weight into our decision to go,” he said. “We should have told our family, ‘Hey, given the nature of our job, we can’t quarantine like other people.’”
The surge around the country has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other health care workers exhausted and demoralized.
“Compassion fatigue is the best word for what we’re experiencing,” said Kiersten Henry, an ICU nurse practitioner at Med Star Montgomery Medical Center in Olney, Maryland. “I feel we’ve already run a marathon, and this is our second one.” While some hospitals are scrambling to find beds and convert storage rooms and other places for use in treating patients, they are also dealing with dire staff shortages.
“We know how to make new beds,” said Dr. Lew Kaplan, a critical care surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “We don’t know how to make newstaff.”