In other news, the State Department has told the Iraqi government we're preparing to abandon our billion dollar fortress-like embassy in Baghdad because the Iranians are so scary.
“We hope the American administration will reconsider it,” Ahmed Mulla Talal, a spokesman for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, said Sunday. “There are outlaw groups that try to shake this relationship, and closing the embassy would send a negative message to them.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notified Kadhimi of the plans Saturday night, according to an official familiar with the matter. Two Western officials in Baghdad said their country’s diplomatic missions had been informed of the plan.
Even thinking of that embassy brought back a lot of mostly-bad memories.
Meanwhile, the British government is preparing new COVID-19 restrictions, including another total lockdown, because Boris Johnson's restrictions predictably didn't go far enough.
Finally, we're looking at our own surge in cases here in the United States.
Cases grew by nearly 9% nationwide compared with a week ago, moving just above 44,300 new cases on average as of Sunday, according to Hopkins data.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said for weeks that the U.S. is reporting an “unacceptably high” number of new coronavirus cases every day. The country should aim for daily new cases below 10,000, not around 40,000 as it currently stands, he said.
“There are states that are starting to show an uptick in cases and even some increase in hospitalizations in some states,” Fauci told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview aired on Monday. [...]
Wisconsin reported a record 2,817 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, according to Hopkins data. The state has reported four consecutive days of more than 2,000 new Covid-19 cases as of Sunday — a first for Wisconsin since the beginning of the pandemic.
It's wild that it's almost October and some areas are setting new records higher than they saw when the pandemic began. And, you know, maybe that's why it's happening. Maybe people just don't understand until it hits their doorstep. Some people don't think it's real, or believe they don't need to take it seriously, because it only affected other people in other areas before.
And there's Trump who was out there just last week saying the virus affects "nobody."