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Hello, all…. January. Not pretty!

Happy Holidays to everyone! Please enjoy them Looking ahead, I expect that we will be meeting virtu-
safely! ally at least through the first quarter of 2021, and per-
haps longer. During this same time period, it is un-
(I recently sent out an article that explains how im- likely to be safe for us to meet in person for any
portant duration of contact with a person infected length of time with friends and family members who
with COVID can be, especially in an indoor setting. do not already live in our households, as well. If you
In a worst-case scenario – small room, no outside have not already acquired a microphone and
ventilation, with a mask – it can take as little as webcam or have not yet become comfortable with
three minutes for someone to breathe in enough video calling over your smartphone, tablet or comput-
infectious droplets suspended in the air to become er, I encourage you to do so. Lot’s of good webcams
infected. At a family and/or friends gathering to cel- (most with built-in microphones) are now available at
ebrate the holidays – typically involving hours of Amazon.com, at very reasonable prices. (My daugh-
eating, drinking and socializing indoors – the poten- ter just bought one for her work-related Zoom calls
tial for one participant unaware that he or she has for under $30, as an improvement over the video
COVID to infect many of the attendees must be quality of her laptop webcam.) J.J. has been send-
considered.) ing out a steady stream of links and announcements

Moving from the specific to the general, there is related to video-calling tutorials and presentations.
both good news and bad news for the U.S., regard- Please take advantage of them so that we can see
ing COVID. Several different vaccines are well your smiling faces at our future Zoom meetings, and
along the approval cycle and could presumably be so that you can use the magic of technology to stay
available for broad distribution during the first half in touch with other friends and family!
of 2021. We don’t yet know how effective they will On the technology front, tech products in general
be for everyone, although in controlled test environ- seem to be more available than earlier in the year. It
ments the various manufacturers are claiming a appears the pipeline is filling once more after the un-
high success rate. Further, we don’t yet know how usual demand for computers, webcams and other
long the immunity from these shots will last. But tech needed to support online learning for students
things are definitely looking up on the vaccine front! across the country and working from home for many
On the other hand, the head of the CDC, Dr. Robert employees whose businesses have closed their offic-
Redfield, just publicly acknowledged that U.S. es or who are unable to travel to meet with custom-
deaths from COVID, now at 270,000, could reach ers or suppliers. I’ve already mentioned webcams,
450,000 by the end of February. That seems al- but computer and smartphone availability seems bet-
most unbelievable to me, but if you do the math it ter to me as well, and we have been seeing some
does compute. The end of February is 86 days good prices during recent Black Friday and Cyber
from now; for his projection to come true, we would Monday sales.
have to see an average of 2,093 deaths per day In closing, I want to share a story that illustrates the
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across the U.S. Yesterday (December 3 ) the U.S. need for digital afterlife planning, a topic that we dis-
had 2,857 COVID deaths; that’s 36% higher than cussed in detail several years ago. A single man I
the daily rate in Redfield’s projection! Hospitals are knew who lived alone died suddenly two weeks ago.
filling up and most experts expect to see a spike in As part of his duties, the executor of his will located
new cases from Thanksgiving travel and socializa- his laptop and smartphone – intending to access
tion and from the major holidays in December and them for information about his financial affairs. Both

December 2020 3