GEORGIA U.S. SENATE RUNOFF ELECTION 5 JAN 2021

 WE really need every Democrat in Georgia to vote for the Democratic candidates in this runoff election, if the gop / greed over people-republican party wins then moscow mitch mcconnell will impose the same obstructionist tactics in the U.S. Senate he used against Pres Obama's administration. If you know anyone in Georgia please make sure they are registered to vote ( RockTheVote )and that they do vote for Jon Ossoff and Rev Ralph Warnock.....

                       

PLAYSCHOOL GAMES & BABY BOO-HOO

 

SEASON FINALE

 

DEAR AMERICANS....

 

‘Time For My Flag to Go Up’: How Anti-Trumpers Are Reclaiming the American Flag 29NOV20

Biden supporters celebrate the declared presidential election result, Nov. 7, 2020, in Philadelphia. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

 I have NEVER let anyone deny me my right to claim the American flag as my own. I am an American and the flag is a symbol of our country no what political party is in charge. As a radical socialist I am always pushing the government to support and enact the policies I favor, and even through the darkness and evil of the drumpf / trump-pence administration I have never given up on my country and have never allowed anyone else's politics give up my pride in the American flag and the democratic Republic it is supposed to represent. Anybody who has abandoned the flag because they disagree with the politics of the ruling party holds superficial allegiance to our country and flag and I actually find them more disgusting than those who exercise their civil liberties and burn the American flag as a sign of protest. This from Politico.....

‘Time For My Flag to Go Up’: How Anti-Trumpers Are Reclaiming the American Flag

Over the past four years, the flag has been re-cast as a kind of MAGA shorthand. Now, Trump foes are ready to take the symbol back.

By JOANNA WEISS

11/29/2020 07:00 AM EST

Joanna Weiss is a writer in Boston and editor of Experience magazine, published by Northeastern University.

About a month before the election, Curtis Woodall logged onto Amazon and ordered an American flag. The 72-year-old Vietnam War veteran and retired infantry soldier had taken his old flag down about a year into the Trump administration. “It hurt. It did,” Woodall said. But he didn’t want anyone in his neighborhood outside Columbia, South Carolina, to associate him with President Donald Trump’s racial rhetoric or anti-immigrant policies. He grew angry when he saw American flags on pickup trucks around town. “They’ve always got a Trump flag and the American flag,” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s bull. That is desecrating the flag that I served over 20 years with.’”

Now, at last, it looked like Trump might lose, so Woodall set his new flag on the dining room table and waited. When the election was called for Joe Biden, “I said, ‘Time for my flag to go up,’” Woodall told me by phone, a couple of weeks later. He sent me a photo of the flag, still hanging beside his garage, his own Dodge Ram pickup in the foreground.

Across the country, in their cautious euphoria after the election, foes of Trump have been embracing the flag in similar ways: unfurling it in front of their homes, waving it in the streets, or simply looking at it differently. The day Biden gave his victory speech, Nancy La Vigne, executive director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, took out the flag she always flies on holidays and hung it outside her home in liberal Bethesda, Maryland. La Vigne meant the act as “an expression of pride in how the system of democracy actually works.” But as the hours went by and she noticed more and more flags around her neighborhood, she realized she was seeing something broader: A spontaneous reclaiming of a symbol that, in the Trump years, had come to represent only one side.

The politicization of the stars and stripes predates Trump, by far. In the Vietnam era, military associations made the flag a fraught symbol. In the Reagan years, left-wing flag-burning protesters sparked Republican efforts to amend the Constitution, carving out the flag as an exception to free speech. But Trump, with his talent for political theater and his penchant for stoking deep partisan rifts, has managed to take the divide further than ever. His supporters brandished the flag alongside Trump slogans on car bumpers and in Twitter and TikTok handles. Members of the far-right Proud Boys staged antagonistic rallies where they’d wave American flags as a statement of division. Trump acted out his own embrace of the flag in a way that was both knowing and grotesque. When he finished his speech at the 2020 CPAC convention last February, Trump famously strutted up to a flag onstage, hugged it, kissed it, and mouthed, “I love you, baby.”

By that time, for many people on both sides of the political chasm, the flag had been re-cast as a kind of shorthand, an extension of the MAGA hat—sending an instant message of which side you were on, or inspiring stereotypes that pulled the country even further apart. “When I saw somebody with a flag bumper sticker or a t-shirt with a big flag on it, I immediately thought. … It’s a Trump nut job. A crazy person,” said California screenwriter Ed Kamen, who tweeted a similar sentiment when the election was called for Biden. Now that Trump seemed repudiated, through the mechanics of democracy, the flag suddenly meant something different to him. “My attitude’s changed about it now,” Kamen, an independent, told me weeks after the election. “I am proud of my country, I love my flag, I love my country. And it’s nice to see the flag again representing the country as a whole, instead of one section of it.”

But the election, like the flag, doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Where Trump’s opponents see a triumph of democracy, his fiercest supporters see something different; fueled by right-wing media, they’re still complaining about fraud, coups and stolen elections. And that unwillingness to unite over the basics of democracy—to acknowledge that, whether you like the results or not, the system works—is unlikely to disappear when Joe Biden takes office. Trump’s rebranding of the flag as a wholly partisan statement has been, in a sense, a triumph in marketing. And a good marketing campaign is hard to undo.

Reverence for the flag is part of American history—and, fundamentally, part of human nature. During trench warfare, it wasn’t unheard of for soldiers to run through open fire to rescue a flag that had been left behind, says John H. Evans, a sociology professor at the University of California-San Diego. “Why would anybody risk their lives for an inanimate object?” he asks. Because, he says, it’s a stand-in for the nation as a whole. Social scientists call that association “civil religion”—the worship of secular objects that represent a national ideal. Think the flag, the Liberty Bell and the original Constitution, written on parchment with quill.

In normal times, those totems represent not just a shared identity, but a common set of beliefs about what the country means, says Ben Gaskins, a political science professor at Lewis and Clark College. For most of history, Americans have largely agreed on those ideals: God and freedom, capitalism and opportunity, a legal system and a common culture.

Those collective bonds were fraying before Trump hit the scene. To some on the left, for instance, the flag became a stand-in for every terrible act that had been done, through history, on the nation’s behalf. But the partisan divisions grew worse during the Trump administration. Gaskins points to polls that show that civic pride dropped precipitously among Democrats after Trump took office. A YouGov poll from 2018 showed a 26 percentage-point gap between Republicans and Democrats when asked if they felt patriotic. A 2018 Pew poll found that Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to believe it’s important to fly the American flag.

And it wasn’t just a question of patriotism, Evans says: Trump and his supporters have also managed to shift the meaning of the flag itself. After all, he notes, there are also two ways to interpret the flag. It can be inclusive, representing a diverse group of people who unite behind a set of common principles. Or it can be exclusive, a symbol of nationalism—an “us” in opposition to a less worthy or virtuous “them.”

That was the message Trump often sent, as he spent four years in a warlike stance. And it’s not surprising that a master of branding would find a way to turn symbols into weapons. Before long, the American flag was one of many banners that came to represent Trumpism as a whole. Oversized Trump-Pence flags, unfurled at beach homes on the Jersey Shore and flotillas in Florida’s intercoastal waterway, were a way for Trump supporters to rub their political leanings in opponents’ faces. (In 2019, parents in Pleasantville, New York complained about a Trump 2020: "No More Bullshit" flag on a homeowner's porch, next door to an elementary school—and noted that the flag broke U.S. code by flying higher than an American flag.) At Trump rallies, some supporters brought the Confederate flag—a symbol of racial division, defiance and resistance to change. The “Don’t Tread on Me” flag sometimes made an appearance, asserting a link between Trumpism and the roots of American history.

Flags in the parking lot of a Trump campaign rally on Oct. 16 in Macon, Ga. | Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

And after the summer’s racial justice protests and calls to “defund the police,” Trump ralliers started flying a “blue lives matter” flag: a black-and-white version of the American flag with one blue stripe, which had been created in response to anti-police protests in 2014. In three decades of work in criminal justice, La Vigne says, she’s never seen such divisiveness over the subject, or so little room for nuance from both sides. “It’s emblematic of the larger narrative that I really credit our outgoing president with—it’s just creating these divisions, making them bigger fissures than they already were,” she says. “He’s very skilled at pitting one group against another.”

As Americans retreated to their corners under Trump, the stars and stripes became a casualty. In extreme cases, people rejected it altogether: La Vigne once saw a tweet that showed a Confederate flag, a Nazi flag and the American flag, with text suggesting that they all had the same meaning. More commonly, people shied away from what they feared would be an association with the wrong side. In some liberal enclaves, an entirely new set of yard signs cropped up—acting as alternatives to the flag, allowing people to proclaim their belonging to a different American tribe. In Portland, Oregon, the progressive haven where he lives, Gaskins sees yard signs asserting beliefs about equality and human rights, access to clean water and racial justice. They’re “a way of trying to square both sides,” Gaskins says—declaring that “I’m proud of my country, there are things that I like about it,” but also that “there are things that need to be fixed.”

The more liberals and progressives detached from the flag, the more Trump and his allies embraced it. In some circles, it became harder and harder to see the flag in a nuanced way—and in rare cases, the confusion got violent. When far-right activists held a rally in Portland in the summer of 2018, a man who described himself as a “slightly progressive leftist” brought an American flag to the counter-protest, intending to send a message that the flag was for everyone. Black-hooded antifa protesters—people who were, nominally, on his own side—declared the flag a “fascist symbol,” ripped it from his hands, and clubbed him over the head, leaving him with a gash and a concussion. “It strikes me as the worst sort of political theater,” the man later told the Oregonian newspaper. The flag had become the ultimate prop, a stand-in for hate.

To people who grew up steeped in old-school displays of patriotism, this divisiveness over the flag has been cause for dismay. “It’s been branded as a sign of the Trump supporters,” says Tom LaRussa, 67, a retiree in Somers, Connecticut. “And it’s taken away from what I grew up with, like the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag code, all that stuff. They raised the flag on Iwo Jima and it meant freedom.”

LaRussa, like many Democrats and anti-Trumpers, spent the last four years in a state of agitation. He poured his frustration onto social media, and broke ties with a close friend who had become a die-hard Trump supporter. “I’m just so infuriated at the way this country has turned out,” he told me.

So when he watched cable TV on the night of Biden’s victory speech, and saw Democrats joyfully embracing the flag, LaRussa felt a glimmer of hope. “People were out in the streets. They were waving the American flag,” he recalled. “And I said to my daughter, ‘It looks like the American flags are back.’”

Supporters of Joe Biden hold an impromptu car parade to celebrate the outcome of the election on November 7, 2020, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Supporters around the country took to the streets to celebrate after news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner in the U.S. presidential race. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

But Evans, the sociologist, says it won’t be easy to make the flag a unifying symbol again. It’s hard to rally around civil religion, he says, “in societies that are divided about who is really upholding the true standards of the nation.” And in post-Trump America, Evans predicts, that division is unlikely to end.

Mary Murray, for one, isn’t ready to put her flag up yet. The retired teacher, 63, grew up on a farm in Kansas, with Democratic parents who were involved in civil rights and instilled a particular interpretation of American values. When her sisters went off to college, her parents would invite their friends from overseas to stay at their farm for the holidays. “I was raised to believe the American flag stood for compassion,” she told me.

Murray took her own flag down a year into the Trump administration, after she saw news stories about migrant children separated from their parents on the southern border. A year or so ago, when Trump did something new to agitate her, she put the flag back up for a couple of months—but flew it upside down.

During the campaign, Murray was heartened to see Biden signs throughout her community near Fort Leavenworth, which is heavy with retired military. But she also couldn’t help but notice one neighbor’s Trump sign, hung high in a tree where it couldn’t be disturbed. “I wanted to get a paintball gun and drive by it, but my sons wouldn’t let me,” she said.

Now, as she watches the post-election news—Trump’s ongoing legal battles and transition intransigence—Murray’s anger hasn’t faded. “I think there’s always going to be Donald Trumpism out there,” she says. “I’m praying that they’ll grow tired and weary and not continue this crap. He is poison, and he has poisoned the American flag.” As for her own flag, she’s waiting for the nation’s fiercest partisan to depart. “I’m not going to put it back up,” she says, “until that leech is out of office, or in jail.”

DORTHY DAY FROM COMMON PRAYER; A LITURGY FOR ORDINARY RADICALS 29NOV2020

 THANK God for the faith, service and example of Dorothy Day!

Daily Prayers for November 29

Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn in 1897. She worked as a journalist for radical newspapers in the 1920s and found most of her friends in the bohemian crowds that gathered in Greenwich Village. While living with a man she loved in 1926, she became pregnant and experienced a mysterious conversion to -Jesus. As a Roman Catholic, she struggled to unite her personal faith with passion for social justice until she met Peter Maurin, with whom she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933. Through hospitality houses in the city, agronomic universities on the land, and roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought, they aimed to “create a new society within the shell of the old,” offering American Christianity the witness of a new monasticism that combines piety and practice, charity and justice.

O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you

as the day rises to meet the sun.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Come, let us sing to the Lord : let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.

Song “Come, Thou Fount”

Teach us, Lord, every day : the duty of delight.

Psalm 139:10 – 16

If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me : and the light around me turn to night,”

darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day : darkness and light to you are both alike.

For you yourself created my inmost parts : you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made : your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

My body was not hidden from you : while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book : they were fashioned day by day, when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O God! : how great is the sum of them!

Teach us, Lord, every day : the duty of delight.

Micah 7:1 – 10 Mark 13:24 – 31

Teach us, Lord, every day : the duty of delight.

Dorothy Day said, “The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.”

Prayers for Others

Our Father

Lord, you show us the same compassion and commitment that a mother has for her tiny child. Teach us to care so completely. Show us how to delight in serving with the same joy you show in nurturing your creation. Amen.

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you;

may he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm;

may he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you;

may he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.

Grateful Dead, absolutely rippin' "Sugar Magnolia~Scarlet~Fire" 3/27/88 Hampton, VA

 YOU know the children were all up dancing during this set!!!!!

Grateful Dead, absolutely rippin' "Sugar Magnolia~Scarlet~Fire" 3/27/88 Hampton, VA

The Grateful Dead perform "So What~Sugar Magnolia~Scarlet Begonias~Fire On The Mountain" on March 27, 1988 at Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, VA. Brought to you by Less Than Face Productions.

WEEEELLLLL, ISN'T THAT SPECIAL!!!!!!

 

ALWAYS, wait, NEVER a lady hure melania drumpf / trump

GOSH I miss these shows! 

Grateful Dead - Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo (Washington, DC 7/12/89)

"Usually a show-opener in its last 20 years in the setlist, this version from RFK 1989 was played as the third song of the first set, always fun to see the Dead mix things up from the usual setlist format." - David Lemieux Directed by Len Dell’Amico and co-produced by Len Dell’Amico and GDP. Subscribe! http://bit.ly/SubscribeToTheDead Take a trip with our playlists.... The Grateful Dead Fundamentals http://bit.ly/GratefulDead101 Legendary Live Cuts http://bit.ly/LiveDeadLiveDead The Dead: Covered http://bit.ly/DeadUnderCover Scintillating Bust Outs http://bit.ly/BustOuts Stay connected with The Dead on... dead.net http://www.dead.net/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/gratefuldead/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gratefuldead Twitter https://twitter.com/GratefulDead ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will you come with me? Won't you come with me? There's no better place to take a long strange trip with the Grateful Dead than right here. We've got music from every single studio album and a bevy of live albums, to boot. There are celebrated live performances from the 70s and 80s and official videos with more skeletons than you can shake your bones at, an exclusive seaside series on what's to come from the band's rich catalog and details on meet-ups all across the promised land. If it's community you’re after, try your hand at our yearly DEAD COVERS PROJECT competition and connect with fellow Dead Heads around the world. Heck, keep your eyes peeled you might even catch a glimpse of Pigpen on keys, Jerry in a GROOVE, Bobby tellin' tales, Mickey talkin' space, Phil and friends, Bill on the beach, or anyone from our extended family. It's all happenin' right here. Subscribe and you won't miss a thing. #GratefulDead #AllTheYearsLive #MississippiHalfStep

Makers of grow-your-own human steaks say meal kit is not ‘technically’ cannibalism 20NOV20

THIS really is so gross....

Enlarge Image

Ouroboros Steak by Andrew Pelling, Orkan Talhan and Grace Knight on display during the "Beazley Designs Of The Year 2020" photocall at Design Museum in London, EnglandGetty Images

Makers of grow-your-own human steaks say meal kit is not ‘technically’ cannibalism

By James Leggate, Fox News

November 20, 2020 | 10:56am

The saying “You are what you eat” may soon become a lot more literal.

A “DIY meal kit” for growing steaks made from human cells was recently nominated for “design of the year” by the London-based Design Museum.

Named the Ouroboros Steak after the circular symbol of a snake eating itself tail-first, the hypothetical kit would come with everything one needs to use their own cells to grow miniature human meat steaks.

“People think that eating oneself is cannibalism, which technically this is not,” Grace Knight, one of the designers, told Dezeen magazine.

Before you go running for your wallet, know this isn’t a product available to buy. It was created by scientist Andrew Pelling, artist Orkan Telhan and Knight, an industrial designer, on commission by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an exhibit last year.

“Growing yourself ensures that you and your loved ones always know the origin of your food, how it has been raised and that its cells were acquired ethically and consensually,” a website for the imagined product states.

The project was made as a critique of the lab-grown meat industry, which the designers told Dezeen magazine is not actually as animal-friendly as one might expect. Lab-grown meat relies on fetal bovine serum for animal cell cultures, though some companies have claimed to have found alternatives. FBS is made from calf fetus blood after pregnant cows are slaughtered.

Lab-grown meat has not yet been approved for human consumption, though some products could hit store shelves in the next few years.

“As the lab-grown meat industry is developing rapidly, it is important to develop designs that expose some of its underlying constraints in order to see beyond the hype,” Pelling told Dezeen.

Growing an Ouroboros Steak would take about three months using cells taken from inside your cheek, the magazine reported. For the collection of sample steaks on display in the museum, the team used human cell cultures purchased from the American Tissue Culture Collection and grew them with donated blood that expired and would have otherwise been destroyed. They preserved the final products in resin.

“Expired human blood is a waste material in the medical system and is cheaper and more sustainable than FBS, but culturally less accepted,” Knight told Dezeen.

St. Jude scientists make breakthrough and discover possible COVID-19 treatment 20NOV20

         WEAR A MASK WEAR A MASK 

PHYSICAL DISTANCING: SIX FEET APART IS BETTER THAN SIX FEET UNDER!

Coronavirus Updates

John Hopkins Univ Coronavirus Covid-19 Dashboard

THE PRC CORONAVIRUS FLAG IS A REMINDER OF THE PRC GOVERNMENT WHO UNLEASHED THIS PANDEMIC ON THE REST OF THE WORLD

Avi Schiffmann CORONAVIRUS DASHBOARD

 THIS is exciting news, and I hope and pray the test go well. It is so sad so many people are suffering and dying and so many families are mourning the loss of family and friends to Covid-19 because the self-centered fascist pig (NOT MY) pres drumpf / trump and his greedy neo-nazi administration lied to the American people about the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic and did nothing to prevent the death and destruction it has wrought on the nation. This from KALB.....

St. Jude immunologist talks about COVID-19 treatment discovery

It's a breakthrough St. Jude researchers said can be used immediately if the government allows emergency authorization for the drugs to be used on COVID-19 patients.

St. Jude scientists make breakthrough and discover possible COVID-19 treatment

By Joyce Peterson, WMC

Published: Nov. 20, 2020 at 12:04 PM EST

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Scientists at St. Jude may have figured out how COVID-19 kills, and more importantly, how to stop it.

The virus has already claimed 250,000 lives in the U.S. and more than a million worldwide. This week, St. Jude researchers announced they think they’ve discovered a treatment.

Anyone with allergies, histamine intolerance, rheumatoid arthritis, or a compromised immune system knows what it’s like to have problems with inflammation. The swelling and pain make it difficult to breathe or to move. The same thing happens with COVID-19.

This virus triggers severe inflammation that cripples the lungs and damages other organs. St. Jude researchers say they’ve identified the mechanisms that drive COVID-19 inflammation and the medicines that can treat it.

The team focused on cytokines, small proteins released in the body in response to inflammation. They concentrated on the most elevated cytokines in COVID-19 patients and found one duo that stood out.

Turns out, the drugs to treat these cytokine reactions, or cytokine storms, already exist.

When tried on mice, the medication protected them from COVID-19 death and from sepsis, a deadly infection of the blood.

“I’ve never been this excited in my entire career,” St. Jude researcher, Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, Ph.D, told WMC Action News 5, “because this can save lives. The other studies that we have in our lab, they might go into textbooks, and in the long run, they might be in the clinic. But this immediate application is the best thing. I wish starting tomorrow we could treat patients with this.”

So now these drugs will be used in clinical trials on COVID-19 patients. If that goes well, FDA approval is the next step.

Researching this treatment may also benefit those who have auto-inflammatory diseases. This work was made possible by grants from ALSAC, the fundraising arm of St. Jude, and by the National Institutes of Health.

The St. Jude findings were peer-reviewed and published in the science journal: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31542-7

Will Thanksgiving be a superspreading event? Look to Canada for answers 2NOV20

PHYSICAL DISTANCING: SIX FEET APART IS BETTER THAN SIX FEET UNDER!

Coronavirus Updates

John Hopkins Univ Coronavirus Covid-19 Dashboard

THE PRC CORONAVIRUS FLAG IS A REMINDER OF THE PRC GOVERNMENT WHO UNLEASHED THIS PANDEMIC ON THE REST OF THE WORLD

Avi Schiffmann CORONAVIRUS DASHBOARD

 THERE has been a lot on mainstream and social media about Thanksgiving and if people should be traveling and if families and friends should be gathering. We all have to make our own decisions but we need to make sure our decisions are made on the facts of the status of the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. There is also a lesson in the results of Canadians who decided to travel and gather for their Thanksgiving on 12 OCTOBER 20. I will be with my family pod here in Ashburn, VA. Pam, Robert and I will break bread together and give thanks that we have been able to remain healthy and that we have not lost any of our family to Covid-19. This from CNN.....

Will Thanksgiving be a superspreading event? Look to Canada for answers

By Paula Newton, CNN

Updated 4:27 PM ET, Mon November 2, 2020

(CNN)Three weeks after Canadians celebrated their Thanksgiving holiday, the country is seeing a national spike in cases.

Several cities and provinces have shattered single day records for coronavirus infections, and Canada's top doctors say the holiday -- held on October 12 -- is partly to blame.

"Prior to Thanksgiving I made a lot of appeals to people about the need to keep the family gatherings small," Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia's provincial health officer, said last week, as she announced a ban on inviting more than six people into your home. "And unfortunately, there were a number of events that have happened that have led to quite dramatic increases over the past week."

CDC Thanksgiving guidelines: How to stay safe and coronavirus-free over the holiday

Now, the US may be on the verge of repeating Canada's same fate, as Americans begin making plans for their holiday that is quickly approaching.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has for weeks warned that coronavirus precautions will result in a very different kind of Thanksgiving for many people this year, himself included.

"It is unfortunate, because that's such a sacred part of the American tradition, the family gathering around Thanksgiving, but that is a risk," Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, told CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell in October.

Fauci on how he sees Thanksgiving holiday playing out 02:24

"You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering, unless you're pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected. Either they've been very recently tested, or they're living a lifestyle in which they don't have any interaction with anybody except you and your family."

Canadian PM Trudeau: 'This sucks'

For weeks, Canadian political leaders in virus hotspots have barred dine-in eating, closed gyms and theaters, and restricted large gatherings.

But family gatherings and house parties are still fueling new Covid-19 cases, straining hospitals and increasing deaths, according to the country's medical experts.

York Region Public Health, a health unit north of Toronto, said a Thanksgiving party with an extended family led to 10 Covid-19 infections, including three babies.

The virus also spread to another household, infecting four more people, and to a workplace where two more people were infected with the virus.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto's medical officer, warned that infection rates in the city are going in the wrong direction -- and that the timing points to Thanksgiving gatherings as the problem.

"It is clearly challenging to wear a mask while you're trying to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner or a meal with friends and family," she said last Monday. "These are the kinds of circumstances that give rise to virus transmission, to virus spread and that actually perpetuate the infection throughout our city."

Dr. Karim Kurji, York Region's medical officer of health, warned that while family gatherings may seem harmless, they are a good example of how the coronavirus can spread.

Canada is now experiencing a stubborn second wave of Covid-19, despite widespread mask-wearing mandates.

"We are in an unprecedented global pandemic that really sucks. It's tough going through this second wave, it's frustrating," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a press conference last Tuesday. "This sucks. It really, really does."

He suggested Christmas gatherings might be off the table given rising infections.

Hospitals in Canada worried about coming holidays

With a surge in cases ongoing and more holidays to come on the calendar, many hospitals in Canada are now activating surge capacity plans, adding temporary Covid-19 units and more acute care beds.

7 ways to stay healthy (and sane) during the fall coronavirus surge

As Christmas nears, critical care specialists are again worried about the consequences as government statistics show hospitalizations nearly doubled in the last month alone.

"Clearly, even though we haven't, in Canada, experienced one of the catastrophic scenarios we fretted over in April, we shouldn't feel too safe," Dr. Francois Lamontagne, a clinician and scientist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, told CNN.

"There are still many reasons to worry, and Europe is offering many arguments to ward off 'public health fatigue' in the general population."

Lamontagne's research involves critical-care therapeutics and diagnostics and his experience and research spans the Ebola crisis in Africa, as well as the current treatment of Covid-19 patients.

His advice for dealing with the current surge is two-fold; one clinical and the other involves the disinformation and confusion currently making the rounds and contributing to the spread of the virus.

"It's an essential message, it's stick to what you know and do it well and be very wary of unfounded claims of wonder drugs and I think that's key," he said, adding that, "steroids or corticosteroids are now proven as effective and they are, and should be, administered to severe cases and that has contributed to improved outcomes."

But Lamontagne said he's also concerned about how some people now distrust authorities and the medical advice they dispense about the virus.

Distrust, he said, can have dire consequences for public health, especially as some now feel the holidays are a good excuse to give in to pandemic fatigue.

"We should not underestimate the impact of communication, honest communication. And sometimes the honest answer is we don't know," Lamontagne said, pointing out that the uncertainty about the virus is reason enough for people to comply with public health restrictions.

Canada's public health experts are hoping the rising hospitalizations will convince Canadians to heed the advice, especially in their own homes.

"I think we need to consider all the celebrations that are coming up whether it's Diwali, or Hanukkah, or Christmas and look at how we can regroup and focus on our immediate families and making sure we can support each other to do it safely," said Henry, who added that large family gatherings will likely not be a part of Christmas this year.

How the US is handling the holidays

The United States has recorded more than 9.1 million infections and 230,548 deaths during the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

October was a month of grim records in the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, and as November begins, experts say the United States hasn't seen the worst of it.

At least 31 states across the US reported at least one record-high day of new coronavirus cases in the past month, according to JHU. Fifteen reported their highest one-day tallies of Covid-19 deaths.

Hospitals could become overwhelmed as the number of coronavirus cases continues to climb, Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday.

"The fall/winter surge should lead to a daily death toll that is approximately three times higher than now by mid-January," the IHME said in its latest forecast.

Is it safe to travel for the holidays this year?

Fauci said that given the current spread of Covid-19 and the uptick in infections, people need to be very careful about social gatherings.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recently released guidance on holiday gatherings and what Americans need to be aware of before traveling, hosting or attending parties -- or just gathering with family and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The lowest risk for contracting the highly infectious virus or spreading it is simply celebrating Thanksgiving in your own home with members of your household and/or virtually with extended family, the CDC said.

If you are going to host a Thanksgiving dinner, the CDC recommends organizing an outdoor event with family and friends from your neighborhood. Large, indoor gatherings, dinners or parties, especially with people from outside your immediate family, pose the highest risk.

Traveling during the holidays, on planes or public transportation, increases the chances of catching and spreading Covid-19 because it increases exposure to the virus, the CDC said in its holiday guidelines.

The agency said, "staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others."

CNN's Shelby Lin Erdman, Madeline Holcombe and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.