During the Thanksgiving week in 2020, COVID cases were on the rise in forty-six states but holding steady in three and decreasing in Hawaii with 11.5 million cases of COVID recorded.  During the third week of November 2021, cases were rising in thirty-seven and decreasing in thirteen states.

In 2020, peak hospitalization amounted to 79,000 individuals on November 18th.  In contrast on November 23rd 2021, the seven-day national daily hospitalization average peaked at 52,073 cases.

By November 18th 2020, 250,579 deaths had been reported.  On the same day in 2021 the death total had risen to 774,580.

There were no vaccinations against COVID administered in 2020.  Effective November 23rd, 69.5 percent of Americans, amounting to 230.7 million have received at least one vaccine with 59 percent fully vaccinated and 36.6 million have received a booster dose.

The EU is experiencing a “fourth wave" of COVID creating a demand for booster vaccinations coupled with intense efforts to persuade unvaccinated people to receive protection.  CDC data confirmed that unvaccinated people were ten times more likely to be admitted to a hospital and five times more likely to be infected than vaccinated adults in thirteen states and cities for which data was available.  Unvaccinated Americans have died at eleven times the rate of those fully vaccinated as a result of the dominance of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.  The Moderna mRNA vaccine was 92 percent effective of preventing hospitalization followed by the similar Pfizer-BioNTech product at 84 percent prevention.