Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the COVID pandemic.
We may be approaching what what might be the first?
So what wave?
And I'm not the person who came up with that.
There's a good Atlantic article that uses that term.
We had the original wave, we had Delta, we had our McCrum, and we may be getting to the
first.
So what wave where most people may just not do anything differently?
We just don't know.
But pandemic fatigue aside, it's starting to look like something may be happening.
So a few headlines.
Philadelphia is restoring indoor mask mandates as cases rise, we've gotten away from almost
any mask mandates.
Yes.
Transportation federally, although that may go away April 18th, although it may not now
that the numbers are starting to rise in some places.
Again, medical facilities and I think most states are, I don't I don't even remember
if that's federal.
In most places, you go to the doctor, you're still supposed to wear a mask, at least in
the Northeast.
But we are starting to see some things happen again.
Philadelphia will restore its indoor mask mandate, The Associated Press reporting confirmed
COVID cases up more than 50 percent in 10 days.
That's a predetermined threshold where the city says masks go back on indoors.
This is being driven by the bay to sub variant of Akron.
On the original Akron was Bay one.
Bay two is this sub variant of Akron.
U.S. State Department orders all non-emergency government staff in Shanghai, China, to leave
as COVID surges.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry is not pleased with this.
On Saturday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the US characterization of
China's COVID policy was a groundless accusation and that the Chinese side has assisted foreign
diplomats and consular staff on COVID related issues.
This is in response to the U.S. State Department warning about the arbitrary enforcement of
local laws universities reinstating mask mandates amid COVID surge.
The American University announced Monday it's putting a mask mandate back on in D.C., Columbia,
Georgetown, Johns Hopkins Rice Universities are also doing this the reason the highly
transmissible be to sub variant.
An average of more than 31000 new COVID cases across the country.
COVID could be surging in the U.S., and we might not even know about it.
This is also an important issue, and I know a lot of people are sick of hearing about
this.
We know that there is less testing going on.
We also know that a lot of the home testing is not being reported to authorities, so a
lot of people.
This started to be an issue during the first immigrant wave in December.
It's an even bigger issue now where increasingly a lot of people are testing at home testing
positive and then they throw the test out and they go, I'm positive, and that's it.
That doesn't show up in the numbers anywhere.
Not not to, you know, I'm not.
I have no reason to think Sam Seder is doing this.
But we sadly learned yesterday that our friend Sam Seder from the majority report has tested
positive.
He's had a bunch of different negative tests, didn't feel well.
Now he's positive.
I don't know what type of a test that was, but the point I'm making is without accusing
Sam of anything.
If Sam's eventual positive test was a home test that's not automatically counted anywhere
unless Sam reports it and because of the decrease decrease not only in people seeking tests,
but also the decrease in some of these municipal and federal testing sites, we we just know
we're almost certainly not capturing all of the cases that are going on.
So what's going to happen?
I don't know.
I am convinced that the threshold for people going back into a cautious state is much higher,
much, much higher than it was before.
And what I mean by that is a slight increase in cases and deaths at this point for social
reasons is not going to kind of drive us back.
In terms of our precautions, I think people are much more comfortable accepting a certain
level of risk.
I'm not immune to that.
I went to Las Vegas last week.
I there were there was not a mask in sight.
I was around thousands of people and thankfully I didn't.
I didn't get sick.
And you know, when I got back, I didn't see people for four days until I really knew I
was in the clear.
But would I have done that at a previous time?
You know, probably not.
At the same time, the numbers look a lot better.
So we're going to have to see what happens.
I think you will absolutely see.
A much more stark difference between states, as in all likelihood, cases continue to rise
and eventually hospitalizations do as well.
Let me know your perspective on this.
Let me know what you're doing.
Let me know what you're seeing in your state.
You can find me on Twitter at the Packman.
And one week from today at 6:00 PM Eastern, we'll have the next David Pakman show Town
Hall.
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