Viral News: The federal government passed on an offer by the drug company Pfizer to reserve more than the contracted 100 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, putting the US behind other countries in line until at least June..

  The population of the US is about 330 million. The 100 million doses are enough for 50 million people because the Pfizer vaccine requires two shots. The government also has a contract for 100 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which also requires two shots.

  Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said yesterday that holiday gatherings should be limited to fewer than 10 people. 

  The country is just beginning to feel the post-Thanksgiving surge of infections and deaths. Christmas is likely to compound the crisis.

  Appearing by video link with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Fauci said, “Ten may even be a bit too much,” He said, “It’s not only the number, it’s the people who might be coming in from out of town. You want to make sure you don’t have people who just got off a plane or a train. That’s even more risky than the absolute number.”

Three Strikes: After a second re-count of the vote, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger once again certified President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election in that state.

  Two days after President Trump appeared at a rally in Georgia claiming he won the state and the vote was rigged, Raffensperger said, “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged.” Biden won by 12,000 votes.

  Georgia’s Republican secretary of state continues to take a risk admitting reality in a party that won’t. Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who’s in a runoff election next month, refuses to say whether she believes Joe Biden won and Trump lost. All she could say is there are hundreds of investigations and Trump has a right to legal process.

  The Republicans fear the wrath of their lame duck president. The Washington Post contacted every Republican member of Congress and out of 249 in the House and Senate, only 27 would say that Biden won.

  Two more lawsuits by the Trump campaign to overturn election results were thrown out yesterday; one in Detroit and one in Atlanta. US District Judge Linda Parker in Detroit wrote that, “The people have spoken.” 

SecDef: Joe Biden has named retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to be his Secretary  of Defense. Austin would be the first black person to hold the job.  

  Austin has had an impressive career, from West Point to the 82^nd Airborne, 10^th Mountain Division, the Iraq war, and command of Central Command. He retired in 2016 after 41 years.

  Austin would require a congressional waiver to take the job. The law says you have to wait seven years before retiring from the military and only two other former generals have been granted that. Congress thought recently-retired officers would be too cozy with their former colleagues in uniform. 

The Obit Page: Gen. Chuck Yeager, the World War II fighter ace who went on to be the first pilot to break the sound barrier and become immortalized by the writer Tom Wolfe in his book, “The Right Stuff,” has died at age 97.

  Yeager came out of West Virginia with a southern drawl and only a high school education. During the war he shot down five German planes in one day, and 13 overall.

  On Oct. 14, 1947, Yeager was dropped from a B-29 bomber in the orange rocket-plane the X-1 and became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. No one was sure the aircraft wouldn’t disintegrate when it broke the barrier. Yeager later wrote that the moment lacked drama. “There should’ve been a bump in the road,” he said, “something to let you know that you had just punched a nice, clean hole through the sonic barrier. The Ughknown was a poke through Jell-O.” 

   — Former US Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, whose name is memorialized in the Sarbannes-Oxley Act of 2002 that curbed fraudulent business accounting, has died at age 87.

  Sarbannes was a quiet man, sometimes accused of being a stealth senator. He was thrust into the spotlight early in his career when in 1974 as a member of the House he was assigned to introduce and defend the article of impeachment accusing President Richard Nixon of obstruction of justice. 

The Bulletin Board: The Virginia Military Institute removed its 108-year-old statue  of former professor and Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson and is moving it to a Civil War museum operated by the college. Black cadets and alumni wanted it gone. — Rolling in dough. Legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan has sold publishing rights to his entire catalogue of songs to Universal Music Publishing Group for an estimated $300 million. — MSNBC has named Rashida Jones, one of its most senior editorial executives, to be the new president of the liberal cable network. Jones will ascend to the job February 1^st,  becoming the highest-ranking black woman in television news. Don’t confuse her with the actress of the same name. — Pizza Hut has introduced a triple-decker pizza box. It’s like a mini chest of drawers with pizza in it.

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