Americans Gather for Thanksgiving at a Moment of National Peril

4 min readNov 28, 2020

The national uptick includes weekly case records in places as diffuse as Delaware, Ohio, Maine and Arizona, where more than 27,000 cases were announced over seven days, exceeding the state’s summer peak. Pennsylvania and Arkansas on Thursday reported daily records for the number of new cases.

In New Mexico, grocery stores are being ordered to close if four employees test positive. In Los Angeles County, Calif., restaurants can no longer offer in-person dining. And in Pima County, Ariz., which includes Tucson, cases have reached record levels and officials have imposed a voluntary curfew.

“What we’re trying to do is decrease social mobility,” said Dr. Theresa Cullen, the Pima County health director.

Deaths are also surging, especially in the Midwest, the region that drove much of the case growth this fall. More than 900 deaths have been announced over the past week in Illinois, along with more than 400 each in Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Health officials have worried aloud for weeks that large Thanksgiving gatherings could seed another wave of infections at a time when the country can scarcely afford it. In many places, hospitals are already full, contact tracers have been overwhelmed and health care workers are exhausted.

“Wisconsin is in a bad place right now with no sign of things getting better without action,” said an open letter signed by hundreds of employees of UW Health, the state university’s medical center and health system. “We are, quite simply, out of time. Without immediate change, our hospitals will be too full to treat all of those with the virus and those with other illnesses or injuries.”

More than 260,000 people have died of coronavirus in the United States. In a speech on the eve of Thanksgiving, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke of his family’s losses, and urged Americans to “hang on” and called for unity.

Coronavirus updates: AstraZeneca CEO touts a new vaccine trial in response to doubts raised in U.S.
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With coronavirus cases surging, retailers are encouraging U.S. consumers to shop online in lieu of lining up for traditional Black Friday doorbuster deals. Public health officials have warned Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday could exacerbate the outbreak in the U.S.

The following data was compiled by Johns Hopkins University:

LA issues stay-home order as cases surge
Los Angeles has issued a new stay-home order as coronavirus cases continue to rise in the city. The new order is for three weeks and will go into effect Monday. LA County confirmed 24 new deaths and 4,544 new cases of Covid-19. Nearly 2,000 people in the county have been hospitalized.

“We know we are asking a lot from so many who have been sacrificing for months on end,” Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “Acting with collective urgency right now is essential if we want to put a stop to this surge.”

The order advises residents to stay home “as much as possible” and to wear a face covering when they go out. It bans people from gathering with people, who aren’t in their households, whether publicly or privately. There are exceptions for “church services and protests, which are constitutionally protected rights.”

Oxford, WHO scientists say more data needed from AstraZeneca vaccine trials
More data will be needed from AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine trials beyond what was presented in a press release to determine the drug’s safety and efficacy, scientists from the University of Oxford, which is co-developing the vaccine with the British drug maker, and the World Health Organization said.

Shares of AstraZeneca dipped this week after the company announced interim results from its vaccine trials on Monday. Some experts in the U.S. have said they’re concerned about the methods used during the company’s late-stage clinical trials regarding dosage amounts given to two separate groups of participants.

Oxford professor Sir John Bell discusses the timeline of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine
“There’s always a problem in announcing scientific results by press release, and that is that you don’t have all the data out there and people aren’t able to really look and think about the data properly,” Sir John Bell, the Regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

Kate O’Brien, director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals at WHO, agreed with Bell during the organization’s press briefing earlier in the day, saying that there’s only a “limited amount that can be said in a press release” and that more information is needed.

Americans Gather for Thanksgiving at a Moment of National Peril

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