Here’s how I’m thinking about this Thanksgiving: You’re either close to someone already lost to Covid-19, or you’re thankful as hell you’re not—and you express that gratitude by keeping yourself and others safe. It’s not like you can’t get as bloated as you do every year and still argue with your relatives on Zoom. If it hadn’t been for the early success of some new-fangled vaccines, I’d argue that the mute button is humankind’s greatest invention of 2020. (And Zoom is removing their time caps for the free version of the app, so you’ll have all the time you need to get the last word in.) If you look at the news (or the roads or the airports), it looks like everyone is out and about as usual. But the truth is that many Americans are heeding the warnings and doing the right thing. NYT Upshot has a detailed map indicating what percentage of people plan to do Thanksgiving with someone outside their family. It would be interesting to overlay this map with voting patterns or even general IQ.

+ “What’s especially scary about this much-dreaded third wave, with record-breaking numbers of people being diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19, is that it will likely get much worse, as temperatures dip and holiday travel increases over the next few weeks.” Buzzfeed: The US Is About To Hit Its Pivotal Pandemic Moment.

+ “The U.S. could have hundreds of thousands of fewer births next year than it would have in the absence of a pandemic.” The Atlantic: Here Comes the COVID-19 Baby Bust. (Well, this gives you something else to do at home over the holiday weekend…)

+ Scheduling note: I’ll play it by ear this weekend, but will likely take days off to observe Thanksgiving and the Cal Stanford Big Game (not listed in order of importance. Go Bears.)