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COVID-19 in the world today:

Tip: click on any of the graphs for larger and clearer images and click on READ MORE to view the complete articles. Also, please forgive the occasional typos.

An international group of scientists has written a response to a push for a "herd immunity" approach to managing the pandemic, which would involve letting the virus spread.

The WHO last week denounced the herd approach—a term used for vaccines—as "scientifically and ethically problematic," because it could greatly boost deaths and expose more people to a virus that may have long-term health consequences. However, a document, known as the Great Barrington declaration, with a list of supporters of the approach was reportedly embraced by the White House.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America has denounced the document, and pushback gained more steam today with the publication in The Lancet of the John Snow Memorandum, which includes scientific references and has now been signed by more than 2,000 scientists, researchers, and health professionals.

Today, 37 states reported at least 1,000 new COVID-19 infections. The US broke yesterday's national daily record of new cases with a stunning 129,783 new positive tests as of 6:00pm PDT. The novel coronavirus killed 1,221 more Americans in the last 24 hours and 7,045 of our brothers and sisters in the last seven days (1,006 daily national average), while infecting 709,828 more patients (100,598 daily national average). The US map above clearly illustrates that more states are joining the heartland, painted in bright red, as the aggressive spread is expanding into more states with active or imminent outbreaks. Also today, Texas became the first state in the Union to pass the symbolic one million infections mark, and is now back in red. On this day, Illinois, Wisconsin (now in the top ten most infected states), North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, Arkansas, Nevada, Kansas, and North Dakota all broke their daily infections records with many other states reporting numbers close to their top watermark. The US is the first nation to have confirmed over 10 million covid-19 infections and will be the first country to report over a quarter million coronavirus related deaths before the end of next week.

COVID-19 in the USA

11/6/2020 COVID-19 UPDATE: Reporting 24 cases from the public and 6 from Valley State Prison (total 30 cases) bringing the total number of reported cases to 5,249.

Of the 5,249:

Today, the seven local counties together confirmed 624 new infections and 9 new coronavirus deaths. In the combined 7 counties, COVID-19 has infected 109,895 and has killed 1,506 residents of our region since it claimed its first central valley victim, in Madera, on March 26, 2020. The weekly trend has been up three weeks in a row, from 1,883 new weekly cases three weeks ago to 2,716 new infections in the last seven days. Our friends and neighbors are needlessly dying, many families are suffering. Science and the courage to follow its logic will solve this pandemic, any other discourse is inadequate.

COVID-19 in Madera + 6 local counties (+% is the positivity rate)

COVID-19 in the 7 counties together

Cases in the local counties have been inching up for three weeks -- up 270 to 2,716 new infections from last week -- and covid-19 related fatalities are up by 6 to 30 covid deaths since last week. The virus is gaining ground again in the central valley and in California.