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China has plenty of wood, and certainly has no problem cutting it down.

Plus, a lot of furniture is synthetic now.

True, but Mr. N is also correct-- for flooring and furniture that is built with American-specific species, we cut down the logs, ship them to China where they are processed into finished goods, and then they are shipped back.

Not really the most environmentally conscientious process, to be sure.

why would you expect a March surge?

Just looking at the lines of past pandemics - a fall winter wave and then a winter spring wave seems to be consistent before bubbling out.  Getting the vaccine out between now and March seems like a pretty critical path.   I'm not sure what are realistic targets on that - though if we got everyone over say 65 vaccinated by then it would seem to limit fatalities even if it doesn't limit actual infections as much.

Yep, nothing to see there.

Meanwhile, it takes forever to get any furniture right now. I guess that tells us where it's all made - and that needs to stop.

Just ordered a new sofa and chair for the living room... It was build-to-order due to fabric selection.

Quoted 16-18 weeks for delivery.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations - Statistics and Research - Our World in Data

The US is at a million a day right now and headed higher.

It has not been as fast as we'd like, but it's happening, even without some "plan".  We have 25 million KNOWN infections.  I think herd immunity is beginning to be a factor in transmission.

Yeah, I think we're now starting to get a lot closer. I'm not one that believes that the number of unknown infections is as large as some, but even with a small multiplier like 3x or 4x known infections we'd be close to 100M. That's 30% of the nation. We're adding millions already who have received their 2nd dose of the vaccine as well, of which there's probably some overlap with previous infections but we're making progress there. 

It's not herd immunity, but it may be reducing R0 as the virus is finding fewer and fewer non-immune hosts to infect. Especially since I'm sure the demographics of infections (known or unknown) has high variance demographically--the people driving spread (people who often gathered with others) might have much higher infection rates than others, so spread could be reducing particularly in those demographics.

Of course we're also out of the holiday season now, so my prediction was that people would continue to gather through Thanksgiving and Christmas because of social pressure, but might "shut it down" in January and February. That could explain some of the declines as well. 

Furniture stores near us are full of inventory and running sales like crazy.

Aren't they always?

Aren't they always?

Yep. Stores around here also have a lot of inventory. Inventory nobody wants. For example:

Seems everywhere is hitting the downside of the curve. Hopefully the vaccine can help avoid a March spike.

This is true all across the major "covid markets" of the world. Daily cases and deaths counts appear to be cresting, even in the "variant" hit UK which until last weak was experiencing increasing daily death counts.