The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now in the business of writing lyrics for Christmas songs. Instead of “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go,” they’ve tweaked that familiar jingle to “Stay on the couch and don’t leave your house the entire holiday season.”

Fresh off the tense warning about not traveling over Thanksgiving (that millions of Americans ignored), the CDC is telling people to just get comfortable in front of a fire and watch a couple dozen Hallmark Christmas movies instead. They strongly suggested Wednesday that Americans stay home for the holidays.

“The best thing for Americans to do in the upcoming holiday season is to stay at home and not travel,’’ Henry Walker, the CDC’s COVID-19 incident manager, told reporters during a conference call. “Cases are rising. Hospitalizations are increasing. Deaths are increasing. We need to try to bend the curve, stop this exponential increase.’’

Walker had other guidance in his announcement today, including the fact that if someone does travel, they should be tested one to three days before departing and three to five days after they arrive.

While the CDC said deaths could be as high as 3,000 a day by Dec. 19, they also shared some better news, that the seven-day average of daily new cases of COVID-19 had trended lower since Nov. 25. There were 179,943 cases on that day in November, as opposed to 164,761 on Tuesday.

Add comment