The U.S. Food and Drug Administration convened a panel on Thursday to decide whether or not to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The panel met a day after a record-breaking 3,100 people died in the United States in a 24-hour period. In the Los Angeles area where this program is produced, new infections and deaths are driving California total and in the San Francisco Bay area, officials say hospitals will run out of ICU beds in 17 days. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now projecting a nationwide death toll of 362,000 by early January. Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is the head of President elect Joe Biden’s Coronavirus task force said, “There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now.”

The message was lost on President Donald Trump however who held a crowded indoor Hanukkah Party at the White House during which he proclaimed that somehow he would win an election he lost. Dozens of people at the White House and in Trump’s orbit have been infected, including Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But, like Trump himself, Mr. Giuliani boasted of the special treatment with experimental drugs that he was given—the same drugs that are being rationed to the rest of the nation. Giuliani said in an interview, “If it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have been put in a hospital frankly…Sometimes when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you they’re going to examine it more carefully, and do everything right.” He has left a trail of exposure during his recent travels including in Michigan and Arizona where he spoke at hearings usually without wearing a mask. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has just announced he tested positive for COVID-19. 

As the pandemic spreads to smaller cities that had previously been less impacted, new battles over face coverings are breaking out. In Boise, Idaho, which has been hard hit, a public health  meeting ended early before holding a contentious vote to mandate mask-wearing in public. Aggressive anti-mask protesters reduced one official, Ada County Commissioner Diana Lachiondo, to tears as she worried about her child’s safety when protesters surrounded her home. She said, “I increasingly don’t recognize this place. There is an ugliness and cruelty in our national rhetoric that is reaching a fevered pitch here at home, and that should worry us all.”

The latest Labor Department figures on unemployment show a sharp increase