It's clear we can expect scary COVID-19 headlines for a while - despite the good news of late about vaccines on the horizon.
Just Thursday we learned of our country's and our own county's record new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. And on Friday we were told that three cities surrounding Chattanooga have now appeared on The New York Times list of emerging COVID-19 hotspots.
It's a distinction no one wants. It means the virus surge in the tri-state area around us - including Athens, Tennessee, Scottsboro, Alabama, and Cleveland, Tennessee - is among the fastest-growing in the nation. And it's actually worse than what the hotspots list shows. Rhea County actually had the second-highest regional growth of new cases in the past week, behind only Scottsboro in Alabama's Jackson County. But Rhea didn't make the Times' list of distinction because its population is not high enough to meet the paper's requirement of at least 50,000 people to designate a metro area.
There's plenty more COVID news.
* Infection rates are soaring at Hamilton County nursing homes. Sixteen nursing homes or assisted living communities in Hamilton County, housing more than 1,600 people, have 294 active cases among residents and 207 cases among staff, according to data published Nov. 25 by the state department of health. That was in large measure why Hamilton County leaders on Thursday repeated a call to the public to help staff clinical and non-clinical positions at local hospitals and long-term care facilities.
And it isn't just Hamilton County. Across our 10-county region of Southeast Tennessee with 34 facilities housing 2,895 residents, there were 717 active COVID-19 cases as of Nov. 25, according to the state department of health. There have been 72 resident deaths in these facilities and more than 530 staff members are sick with the virus.
* President-elect Joe Biden says that among his first acts, he call for 100 days of mask wearing.
(Hello Tennessee and Georgia governors: Where are you and why haven't you already done this with statewide mask mandates?)
* Three former presidents - Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton - say they'd be willing to take a coronavirus vaccine publicly, once one becomes available, to encourage all Americans to get inoculated against a disease that has already killed more than 277,000 people nationwide.
"I promise you that when it's been made [available] for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it," Obama said Thursday on a SiriusXM talk show. "I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science."
But as Obama suggested, don't watch for his vaccine anytime soon.
The Food and Drug Administration will consider authorizing emergency use of two vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna later this month, but current estimates project that no more than 20 million doses of each vaccine will be available by the end of this year, meaning shots will be rationed.
Health care workers and nursing home residents will be at the front of the line, and that encompasses about 24 million people out of a U.S. population of around 330 million.
The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which was reported to be 95% effective during clinical trials, are expected to arrive in Tennessee in mid-December. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people will be vaccinated with the Pfizer's two-dose vaccine.
If you're wondering where that puts you in the wait line for a vaccine, The New York Times offers a handy calculator.
The anonymous calculator asks four questions: How old are you? What county and state do you live in? Do you work in these professions - health care, essential, first responder, teacher, none of these? Do you have COVID-related health risks?
Like the virus news, the calculator, titled "Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line" is depressing.
Here's a quick snapshot of some hypothetical Hamilton County residents and where they are in the nation's vaccine line:
A 65-year-old who is not in the named professions and has no COVID-related risk is in line behind 118.5 million people in the U.S.
A 48-year old with the same answers is behind 268.7 million.
Give either the 65-year-old or 48-year-old an essential job and they jump ahead to stand behind only 118.5 million or 126.5 million, respectively. With or without an essential job but a risk, both are behind only 23 million people.
A 30-year-old teacher with no risk is behind 135.7 million people. Another 30-year-old without an essential job, but a risk is behind 23 million.
Things look a little brighter - sort of - when you look just at Tennessee, where that 48-year-old with a COVID risk would be behind 529,300 other Tennesseans who are at still higher risk.
Mask up, folks. The vaccines are a long way off, still. But the virus is not. In fact, COVID-19 is here - with distinction.