California will impose stay-at-home orders in areas where intensive care units are close to capacity.
New York City’s average positive test rate rose above 5 percent for the first time since May.
Three former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — said they were willing to take an approved vaccine publicly to demonstrate its safety.
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Bad as things are, the worst is yet to come

Nine months after the initial outbreak, the United States, by our best indicators, has never been in a worse position in the pandemic.

Across the country, more than 100,000 people are hospitalized with Covid-19, a record that is nearly double the high point in the spring, when the pandemic reached its first peak. The country also recorded nearly 200,000 cases yesterday, it’s second highest daily total since the pandemic began, and today surpassed a total of 14 million infections.
The New York Times

But no indicator is more consequential, or gut-wrenching, than the death rate — and yesterday 2,885 people died from Covid-19, more than the record set in April, when the pandemic first peaked.
The New York Times

Sadly, all indications point to things probably getting much worse.

When there are so many cases in so many places, as there are now, it becomes much more difficult to bend the curve — it’s like turning around an aircraft carrier, Dr. Anthony Fauci told me recently.

The April peak was the worst moment in the spring. Deaths dropped after lockdowns were imposed, Americans changed their behavior and the summer months arrived.

Now, however, there’s no interruption in sight. The delayed effects of Thanksgiving travel and gatherings are likely to push the cases, hospitalizations and deaths higher. The communal rituals of support and hope that helped get the country through the first surge — like the nightly pot-banging salutes to health care workers — have disappeared. Pandemic fatigue and winter’s grim chill make the appeal of December holiday gatherings even more difficult to resist.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Wednesday that he thought that the next few months may not be just the toughest moment of the coronavirus pandemic, but perhaps the most difficult time in the nation’s public health history.

But there is still time to turn things around, he said, if Americans would just take measures to slow the spread, like wearing masks.

“It’s not a fait accompli,” he said. “We’re not defenseless. The truth is that mitigation works. But it’s not going to work if half of us do what we need to do. Probably not even if three-quarters do.”
The New York Times