The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Still A Thing

 I found out a couple of days ago that someone I knew from my home town had died of COVID-19.

Way back in the day when I was a much younger Dave-El, I worked at a small town radio station. To say it was run on a shoestring budget is way overestimating the station's assets. We played Top 40, country, gospel, farm reports and any number of things depending on the time of day and who was paying for it. Working for this station was a man named Lloyd Gore. 

Lloyd had a great radio voice and when it came to his own air work, he was a consummate professional. 

But he had, to put it as kindly as possible, a face for radio. He was big, lumpy and slovenly with a tendency to smell bad. Woe unto those who had a shift after him as I often did. 

Still, Lloyd was a solid radio guy who held that station together even as the shoe string wore down to a thread. 

Lloyd was already an old man when I knew him way back when so I was a bit surprised to hear that until recently he was still alive, albeit in a nursing home which is where he contracted COVID-19 and died a few days ago.  

Sadly, Lloyd was alone when he died in his nursing home bed. 

And also tragically not alone as he joins over 381,000 people who have died in this country during the pandemic.  

The coronavirus pandemic is getting worse.  More than 4,400 people across the country were reported dead from the virus on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University, a new record and a very milestone. 

America is also experiencing peak rates of new infections and hospitalizations.  

Remember when this was all supposed to go away last April when the weather got warm? 

Here in North Carolina, the county I live in is apparently a major hot bed of coronavirus activity. In a dire and morbid sign of how bad things are getting, the main hospital in our area has brought in refrigerator trucks to supplement space in the morgue. 

After nearly a year, the coronavirus pandemic Is still a thing.