Voted

It feels like nothing is new or different because in my life, it's not. However, infection rates around the country (and world, actually) are increasing dramatically, reaching and surpassing previous highs. Many cities are recording new highest daily infection rates every day. One of the problems this time as opposed to the earlier spikes in cases is that cases are less centralized to specific cities, and more rural. That means that 1) resources and medical professionals can't just be directed to a certain place to provide support, and 2) many rural areas don't even have hospitals or sufficient healthcare facilities. Utah is having a major spike in cases and people are worried and upset, but politicians are basically doing everything short of mandating masks and shutdowns. Idaho is sending patients to hospitals 600 miles (!!) away because they don't have facilities there. Many places are talking about hospitals being at capacity and having to ration healthcare.

...And yet I still see people arguing that things should be more open than they currently are...

Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash

In other news, the US election is now one week + one day away. I chose to do mail-in voting, to reduce exposure to other voters and poll workers, and to stay home and out of any potential mess on election day. I already returned my mail-in ballot at a drop-box last week and received confirmation that it was received by the county, but in my state they can't start counting the mail-in and absentee ballots until election day. Even though I've heard some counties are prepared with enough people and equipment to count all their early voting ballots in one day, we're still expecting that it will be at least a few days (maybe weeks) before all the votes nationwide are counted.