Memorial Day – what happened to the parades and walks in cemeteries?

 I vividly recall from my childhood the prominence of Memorial Day among the pantheon of holidays.  It was one of the two big civic holidays.  The other being the Fourth of July.  At a young age I could sense the difference between the two – one celebratory and one solemn.  Memorial Day is larger in my memory.  The holiday was specifically to remember the dead of war, but the event was broader in that it was also an opportunity to visit and reflect more generally on relatives and friends who had passed.  It also related to the continuation of a tradition that emerged in the mid-1800s that made cemeteries places for peaceful meditation with nature’s beauty and communing with one’s family and friends – both living and dead.  As can be said of many traditions – times have changed.

After the Civil War ended many communities began to hold spring memorial gatherings to remember the war dead.  In 1868, a Northern veteran organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, formalized and spread the growing tradition by calling for “Decoration Day” to be a national day of remembrance. Each spring communities would gather for the purpose of “strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”  

The “Summer of 2021” – looking good

I am more optimistic than government officials about the pace and extent to which COVID-19 related deaths and hospitalizations will decline and herd immunity be achieved in the U.S.   Vaccine producers are ramping up production to meet demand; states are working out kinks in vaccine administration; the emphasis on vaccinating elders directly addresses the most vulnerable population; and up to one third of the population may already carry natural immunities from infection.  These factors combined will likely result in dramatic change in spread, hospitalization, and deaths before summer.

State Covid-19 pandemic performance update

This blog post provides relative rankings of states in four coronavirus disease (COVID-19) performance categories.  This update is published now because there was significant spread throughout the country that began in October, but is now subsiding.  It is also issued at this time because vaccines have now been distributed for more than a month and some measures of performance are now available to assess state vaccine implementation.  

The United States exceeded 25 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 430,000 related deaths this week.  A dramatic increase in cases and deaths began in October.  The event is subsiding as new cases and 7 day averages decrease across the country.  Daily deaths that typically lag cases by about two weeks have also begun to decline. 

Thus far, 48,386,275 vaccine doses have been distributed to states and territories and some federal departments and agencies.  26,193,682 doses have been administered, of which 4,263,056 were second doses.

Second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine  and the Moderna vaccine are administered 28 and 21 days respectively after the first dose.  Second doses are an increasing portion of doses administered from state vaccine allotments.

Like so much of the pandemic response, specific vaccination priorities within states fall under the authority of governors aided by federal funding and FDA recommendations.