Your Daily Roundup for November 20th

Good morning. As the COVID-19 pandemic takes a toll on life in America, our team at Future Majority is tracking the latest updates: 

A grim death toll, but advancements in a potential vaccine:

This week, the United States surpassed 250,000 COVID-19 related deaths. It’s a tragic milestone that is expected to only increase as the weather cools, people move indoors, and gather for the holidays despite the CDC urging Americans to stay home.

But on the vaccine front, there is promising news as Pfizer and BioNTech announced they would seek emergency-use authorization from the FDA for its vaccine that in a late-stage clinical trial demonstrated 95% effectiveness. The companies plan to distribute some doses of the vaccine by December.

With Thanksgiving less than a week away, the virus is raging:

In only a matter of three weeks, the United States surged from reporting 100,000 new daily cases of COVID-19 to nearly 200,000 -- a rapid doubling in cases that has nearly every state as a “red zone.” As a result, hospitals are beginning to be overwhelmed as ICUs reach capacity, and frontline healthcare workers are reporting widespread exhaustion and despair. 

A hand recount in Georgia has shown again that President-elect Biden carried the state:

Election officials in Georgia conducted a hand recount for the presidential election and confirmed that President-elect Joe Biden won the state by over 12,000 votes. Georgia’s secretary of state is set to certify the results of the election today, which will hand the state’s 16 Electoral Votes to Biden. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to wage a flailing legal battle to subvert the will of the voters in key states that he lost to Biden. Some Republican Senators, including Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) have begun to speak out against his unprecedented actions.