Hope the Christmas and New Year parties will be low key, keeping in mind the dangers of mass gathering at present
I guess we have to define what mass gathering means. In our state the governor flip flopped again and now says in a week schools can reopen if they want. I don't think a few hundred people counts as a mass gathering. I guess if a school is 5A or 6A a couple thousand might be considered a mass gathering. With the Christmas spike coming, and then opening schools probably a few weeks or month after that it should be interesting to see what the results are.
I do know a few business have just given up on the states response and are just going to open anyway. A mayor of a town not too far outside of Portland announced that his city may open businesses if they want. I expect others to follow.
Must be Oregon by the sounds of your posts. Well it isn’t the first flip or flop by the governor by any means. I’ve wondered how the state response to the pandemic would have been different (or the same) if the former governor hadn’t resigned thereby opening the door for the current governor. The former was a physician.
A new variant of Covid-19 has started a second wave of infections in South Africa & is spreading faster than the virus in the first wave.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-12-21/new-strain-of-covid-19-is-driving-south-africas-resurgence
UK has also banned all flights coming in from South Africa.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/24/uk-bans-flights-from-south-africa-as-new-york-to-check-on-all-british-arrivals
I remember a lot of conversation about that 9 months ago. That the virus could mutate. One possibility was, and still is, that it would become more contagious, but less deadly. And then mutate again, and do the same. Until eventually it becomes a coronavirus that is easily transmissible, causes a cough, sore throat, possibly fever or runny nose. Scientists have already come up with a name for such a new and controversial coronavirus. The common cold.
Most mutations of the virus that have occurred till now only seem to be making it worse, or almost as much deadly as the original one. Though some mutations have died out.
What remains to be seen is if the developed vaccines will work against the new strains or not. Most scientists seem sure that they will~
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/19/what-is-the-new-covid-strain-and-will-vaccines-work-against-it
I think it depends on what we mean by worse or more deadly. If it's more contagious, all other things being equal that would mean more deadly, as more people would die. I guess I should say less severe as far as symptoms. There was, and still is, the possibility that the virus could mutate, becoming more contagious, but have less severe symptoms.
In our state today, they reported 21 new deaths, 5 of which were not over the age of 80. Our state has a slightly higher average age of covid related death than the national average. Still very close though. What's interesting to me is that so far, with the alleged 330 thousand deaths, the average age is still ABOVE the average age of death for everything else.
Whether it's cancer, poison, car crashes, suicide, heart attack, slipping on a banana peel, etc. Dying of covid related reasons is quite literally no more or less likely than dying of anything else.