At the end of the last update, COVID-19 was quickly spreading across the state and the country. That night after I wrote the post the Governor sent out an emergency alert and notified us through our cell phones that he would hold a press conference and outline new regulations. The new regulations implemented a statewide mask mandate and mandated that social gatherings be limited to only people in the same household. With the virus threatening to overwhelm our hospitals, it was a necessary change. We had not been having a lot of contact outside of our household, but we had let our kids play with a few neighbors and had to tell them they could not play with friends for a couple weeks during the mandate. It went out of effect November 23 with encouragement to remain diligent and limit interaction with people outside your own household.
In the days that followed his announcment, the case spike (as expected) continued, but it made a huge difference starting week 2 of the mandate to really reduce cases.
Cases have remained high, around 2,000 per day since, but much better than before. The positive rate declined due to the mandate, but now has increased above the highest during the entire pandemic (about 25% positive test rate).
A few Utah case counts.
Meanwhile, the US cases have skyrocketed. The average new cases per day is now over 200,000 per day.
Amidst all of this, just two days ago a vaccine was approved by the FDA. I am grateful for all the people who have worked so hard to make this vaccine. However, I worry because it is a long path for distribution and so many people have already lost their patience to be diligent in slowing the spread of COVID-19. However, it will make a huge difference.
While Shantel and I are excited about the vaccine we have a couple thoughts. 1) We won't be on a list to be able to get the vaccine for a long time (Maybe in May-August sometime). 2) This was developed so quickly, we definitely want to wait and see how it goes before taking the vaccine.
Here are some pictures from us for the last month.
One of the nicest things (especially for Shantel) is that when she does need to run out she can leave Lucy napping and then I can just get her if she wakes up. It has been fun to every once in a while bring her in to play while I work.
We got the game pandemic a few years ago and just never got it out to learn how to play it. Then when the pandemic hit, it was too much to play a game about a pandemic. For Thanksgiving we finally got it out and played it. We really loved it and it was so much fun, though truthfully, we knew so much more about pandemics than we ever would have imagined.
Shantel out at the store.
Shantel and the kids at the Zoo.
A rate trip where the kids got to go to the store.
Last we grabbed a few pictures to include in our Christmas cards this year.
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