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Greetings!

From the Revitalize crew, our sponsors at Seelig+Cussigh, and the partners in agile intervention and reinvention at Agile 6, Resolute, and Hoffman Associates, we wish you a most happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving. Our shared sympathies for those of you who have reduced the size of the dinner and/or have not been able to travel to family or welcome travelers to your home. Most importantly, for those of you working the Thanksgiving shift in long-term care facilities, ED’s, the floors, the lab, and rads departments, in the administrator chairs, or on call for clinical and governmental agencies, we offer our thanks for your service today (and for our readers' past Thanksgiving shifts).   

A second week in a row we start with the Revitalize Public Service Announcement – this week is from The Atlantic who offers, ”Answers to every possible pandemic-Thanksgiving question.” We realize that most of your plans are set – although last minute cramming for a final exam may not work – a quick review before the test often helps     

And this week we also offer a “curator-find” that is today’s linked podcast, which is a history of pandemics and the past year’s failed battles. The podcast is John Heilemann's Hell and High Water, in which he interviews the great public health journalist Laurie Garret. Garret has been on our TV screens and in our ears, having predicted the Covid pandemic and over the past months documenting and explaining its deadly progress; please today or over the holiday weekend listen to this podcast.

As you will read, Europe is flattening the curve and the U.S. faces in every state its greatest challenges. On Nov. 23, 2020 in the U.S. there were 172,230 new cases, an increase of approximately 10,000 new cases from data reported for Nov 16, there are 12,777,371 total cases. On Nov. 23, there were 972 deaths (a week ago on that day there were 740 deaths) and the death total has reached 263,687. The following reports reflect data from Nov. 23: 
  • In Italy  there were 22,930 new cases (an approximate 5K decrease from data reported for Nov. 16 ),1,431,795 total cases, and 630 deaths, a 20 percent increase from Nov.16 (50,453 total deaths).  
  • In France, 4,452 new cases , an approximate 50 percent decrease over Nov. 16, which was a 67 percent decrease over the prior week. France has 2,144,660 total cases. There were 500 deaths, six fewer than Nov. 16, and there have been a total of 49,232 deaths. 
  • In Germany , there were 14,537 new cases, approximately 30 fewer cases than Nov. 16 (946,648 total cases) and deaths increased by 41 over data reported here last week; there were 240 deaths (14,537 total deaths). 
  • The United Kingdom had 15,450 new cases ( approximately 6K fewer than Nov. 16) and 1,527,495 total cases, 206 deaths, seven fewer than Nov. 16, increasing their Covid death total to 55,230.
  • India, with a total population of 1.38 billion, had approximately 50 percent more new cases and 31 more deaths than on Nov. 16, with 37,410 new cases (9,177,722 total cases) and 481 new deaths (134,254 total deaths).
  • Brazil had 16,603 new cases, an approximate 25 percent increase and 344 new deaths, an increase of 88 deaths (6,088,004 total cases and 169,451 total deaths).
  • Our neighbor to north, Canada, 30th as to worldwide total cases, had 5,713 new cases and 66 new deaths (this was for a second week in a row an approximate 33 percent increase in new cases and in deaths) for a total of 337,555 cases and 11,521 deaths. The last and most tragic comparison is that the U.S. has an approximate 9-times larger population than Canada, yet we have had 38 times more cases.

Post the data, we find that Three is the Thanksgiving charm, by that we have the return of The Atlantic’s Ed Yong who states, “Hospitals know what’s coming.” As reported in this great, must-read article, “‘We are on an absolutely catastrophic path,’ said a COVID-19 doctor at America’s best-prepared hospital.” The New York Times finds “1 America, 1 pandemic, 2 realities,” the two realities are realized in The Times’ “Journeys through two states found Americans leading starkly different lives in the pandemic. New Mexico feels at a standstill. In South Dakota, life is going right on.” Also, from The Times is the in-depth look at how we got at-their-time-of-publication Sunday two vaccines and what is now three vaccines with more than 90 percent effectiveness; please take the link to “Remarkable race for a Coronavirus vaccine.”    

Mid-day Monday in California the GSA certified an election that was already decided, allowing the Biden team to have access to people, plans, data, office space, and money. The New Yorker helps us to understand what steps will be and can be taken in “Biden’s Covid-19 mission.”

From all of us about to exit the Revitalize virtual offices and head to our real kitchen, we offer Revitalize for Nov. 25:
Revitalize: The week in health-care news you need
Answers to every possible pandemic-Thanksgiving question: There is no perfectly safe way to gather. That said, here’s how to make the holiday less dangerous.

John Heilemann interviews the great public health journalist Laurie Garrett.

Hospitals know what’s coming:
“We are on an absolutely catastrophic path,” said a Covid-19 doctor at America’s best-prepared hospital. Perhaps no hospital in the United States was better prepared for a pandemic than the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
After the SARS outbreak of 2003, its staff began specifically preparing for emerging infections. 

1 America, 1 pandemic, 2 realities: Journeys through two states found Americans leading starkly different lives in the pandemic. New Mexico feels at a standstill. In South Dakota, life is going right on.
Politics, science and the remarkable race for a Coronavirus vaccine: The furious race to develop a coronavirus vaccine played out against a presidential election, between a pharmaceutical giant, and a biotech upstart, with the stakes as high as they could get.

Biden’s Covid-19 Mission: The most torturous interval may be the one between now and Inauguration Day. On Jan. 20, 2021—a year to the day since the first case of Covid-19 in the U.S. was confirmed—Joe Biden is due to be sworn in as President. But, until then, Donald Trump will linger in office for weeks in which, it is projected, the average number of deaths will rise to 2,000 a day. 
Jerry Seelig, CEO
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