JFC: So about that Thanksgiving surge ...

How many states are at 100% hospital capacity?
Answer: 1 - New Mexico.

I don't know where you get your information, but this doctor is not agreeing with you.

Gilman told the Washington Post he arrived at the hospital the evening of 22 November for another intense 12-hour emergency room shift, only to find out it had run out of intensive care unit beds.

“Just got to work and was notified there are no more ICU beds in the state of Arizona,” he said in a tweet that has since been shared almost 30,000 times.

At the time, Arizona’s department of health services reported that 90% of the state’s ICU beds were full. Gilman told the Post he had tweeted out of “moral obligation” to the public, saying the hospital was so full that night that he had to treat Covid-19 patients in the waiting room.

He was fired for that tweet, and he's not the only doctor to be told not to talk about bed shortages.

"This isn't the flu" works both ways. The flu kills a lot of children. Personally, I'd much rather die of COVID at an average age 82, than die of plague, ebola, or Spanish flu as a kid or middle-aged adult. Sure, I'd like to live forever, but I don't think that gives me the right to tell everyone younger than me to lock themselves up and not enjoy life.

The only thing I'm outraged about is how our bureaucracy has blocked access to vaccines for so long to people who want them. If you're living in a nursing home north of the Mason Dixie line, it probably made more sense for you to take an experimental COVID vaccine in the spring than risk catching the disease in the winter. Unfortunately, healthcare in the USA suffers from tremendous gatekeeping under the pretense of 'safety', so people did not have the freedom to make that decision for themselves.

Until people voluntary stop doing things like meeting with friends and family in private homes the spread will continue unabated.

If they close indoor dining they should close liquor stores and take-out too. Maybe that would stop people from gathering.

Deer Island is actually pretty nice to walk around in good weather, although on occasion you do get some rotten egg smell from the treatment plant. There are awesome views of the harbor/airport/downtown. You can get there on the T once that's safe again, too.

The walk is interesting even when the weather isn't great; there's a ginormous seawall on the ocean side and the waves hitting that seawall are equally ginormous.

I tried digging through the MWRA site to find it myself but missed that document. The site, while having an archaic design, is full of information about the system.

Your reopening-dependent people are getting a bad deal, it's true, but to imply that they are the most at-risk and most affected is not accurate. I'd say that health-care workers and caregivers in general are risking infection more, and are more affected by the spread of the virus. They also get nothing extra for their literally and directly life-sustaining work.

I've heard this rumor that the government has access to money.