Look, I get it. I really do. We are all so over this pandemic and desperate for things to be back to normal. But they aren't, we aren't there, and pretending we are will not make it so.
The number are already going up so fast, so fast. A quarter of a million Americans have died from this. So many deaths could have been prevented if everyone wore masks, kept their distance, reined things in.
And now Thanksgiving is next week, and I'm truly afraid of what is going to happen next. Look what happened in Canada after their Thanksgiving:
Our local cases are already flying up. The tourists keep coming, the snowbirds keep coming, and on the one hand, there are lots of people I want to see down here, plus the economy frankly needs the tourism money. But on the other, pretending there is no pandemic is mysteriously not stopping the disease from spreading. This is my little town:
Amen. How many more days of nearly 200,000 new cases a day (that's statistically about 2400 coming deaths per) do we want to go through?!
ReplyDeleteMy nephew got married in September. We didn't go. His five brothers did, and various other relatives; the photos showed the reception outside with maybe thirty-five people. Most of whom weren't wearing masks. Everybody had been tested.
Two days later one of the brothers had covid.
There was some real nail biting there for awhile, but if anyone caught it from him they haven't admitted it to me.
Yeah. Our local hospital kept expanding and expanding the COVID ward, until now they've absorbed nearly half of the regular ICU beds (that are, I would note, regularly in use; these are not "spare backups in case of a really dire emergency" but things that are often used), expanded into more of the hospital, *and* they still don't have quite enough space, so someone with COVID is currently in "emergency room hold" (I assume: one of the ER rooms is now a COVID room until they can find a space for them).
ReplyDeleteWe are already having people die unnecessarily simply because it was unnecessary that they get sick; we are now at/around the point where *more* people die unnecessarily because medical resources are strained beyond the point of maximally effective treatment (both for COVID and for whatever other emergency medical situations arise). I have an aunt who is currently alive, in large part because she got sick in an area that *had* the resources (nursing, bed, medications, machines) to haul her all the way back. If she'd gotten sick in the city we're living in, her odds would have been different. Which is not to say that medical staff aren't doing everything they can! It's just that what can be done when you have a certain patient-to-resource ratio is *different* than what can be done with a worse patient-to-resource ratio.
So! Everyone! Can you maybe not eat *in* restaurants, please? (honestly: I cannot *believe* that restaurants in our area are open for dine-in, given the hospital situation?
so please don't trust that abiding by local regulations is "enough" for the spread in your local area.) And please don't gather together with extra people in your homes, especially with elderly people present? Thank you all.
It's so sad that people just don't believe what the health officials are saying. People don't believe the media, their local Boards of Health or any of the statistics, but people will believe Trump and his supporters. It's just going to be the two of us and the cat -- just like normal. We're not taking chances and wish other people wouldn't.
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