Today @ScottGottliebMD and I spoke with all 50 states about the current state, challenges & outlook of the pandemic.

Will summarize here. Follow if interested.

Scott’s summarized where we are as the equivalent of March 15%- it’s about to get much much worse. 1/

Nursing home deaths are growing rampant. 2000 last week at least.

I spoke to the person who oversees nursing home safety. They are EXTREMELY worried.

Scott Atlas’s theory that we can “protect the old people” has been completely, sadly, thoroughly de-bunked. And he ought to lose his license and relegated to Twitter. I assume he will not apologize today, but hears from now, regret what he reaped.

Our biggest concern for the moment is what’s happening with the health care workforce. In cities around the country they are at capacity. PPE stocks are < 3 months. Many workers are sick.

60,000 hospitalizations! And climbing.

Imagine being at 60,000 hospitalizations on March 15– at the beginning.

Scott sees case growth through Inauguration Day— similar time my thread last night. The numbers may be overwhelming.

With no official bully pulpit during this period (I suggested it’s been empty all along), things fall hard to the governors to convince the public to take every possible action right now to slow the spread.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas, and no no governor seems to want to take too hard a line.

We talked about the vaccines coming. 4 vaccines headed for approval. Starting next week. 2 weeks for approval. Then vaccine criteria. Then statw allotments.

Meaning, some arms get jabbed this year. A lot of health care workers in January.

Bringing people to the vaccines will be easy enough for the people who can do it— with some vaccines twice. Bringing the vaccines to people who can’t is more challenging. People like @cvspharmacy and others will need to be creative.

The cold storage isn’t a non-starter, just a challenge we need to deal with. Scott thinks by mid next year, we could get to high vaccination rates.

Bottom line, both of our concerns were very high. Just as both of our optimism was very high.

So much of this falls on us as individuals and families. Too easy to have a blind eye and be tired of it all.

Suggest listening to these last two episodes.
@EricTopol on this vaccine
@CorsIAQ on indoor transmission this winter http://Smarturl.it/inthebubble