The hospital's across the U.S. are filling up as unchecked COVID-19 transmission continues.

Meanwhile, President Trump continues to block President-elect Joe Biden's transition from

accessing the federal government to prepare to take on COVID-19, even as his administration

continues to ignore the imminent threat of the pandemic. The specter of Thanksgiving and Black

Friday in the midst of the worst wave of this pandemic does not bode well for the near future.

But on the bright side, Moderna just announced that their vaccine showed 94.5% efficacy in preliminary

analysis of their political trials. This is America Dissected. I'm your host, Dr. Abduel Alseid.

And there is a light at the end of this tunnel, but it is a long, long tunnel.

This week saw the worst surge in COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the past

two weeks, cases are up 81% and deaths up 39%. Perhaps worst of all right now is that hospitals are swarmed.

To understand why, I want you to think back to the early days of the pandemic in March and April

when all you were hearing was this. You have likely heard the phrase flatten the curve used when

talking about reducing the number of coronavirus cases, but what does that mean exactly and how can we

do it? The worry was that if we couldn't slow down transmission of COVID-19, that we would exhaust

our supply of ventilators, hospital beds, and healthy frontline healthcare workers. Well,

we're back to that now. Only worse. Hospitals are filling up. But where the first wave of this

pandemic was relegated to major cities, COVID-19 is now everywhere. One of the most important things

that administrators could do then was shift the sick into other hospitals or recruit healthcare

professionals from less affected communities to work in the hardest-hit hospitals. But now,

because the pandemic is reaching into the most remote parts of the country, there really aren't

quote unquote less affected communities. Last week, we spoke with Sarah Jane Trouble and Dr. Elizabeth

Rosenfall about how our healthcare system has been failing rural communities because their hospitals

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