Fourth of July is all about Mom’s potato salad, hotdogs grilled nearby, and a good seat for viewing the fireworks. Sometimes, there is a philharmonic orchestra or playing Frisbee in the park. There are all of the cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends we like. Even the ones we do not like look a little less awful under the light shows. Now, we need to take that memory and tuck it in a pocket. That was 2019, but 2020 brings us a deadly new reality “the perfect storm.”
With no national leadership, no federal testing, quality control, and standards, no contact tracing, no strong national leadership, each state has been on their own. A number of governors started early on their own, others still do not have it together. Even though the president insists on a naked face and politicized mask-wearing, that and social distancing have continually achieved the best results.
Donald Trump has failed in his leadership, in his blatant disregard of Americans’ lives, because he wanted to pretend the pandemic was over, urged states to open up too early, and sacrificed what will be hundreds of thousands of our country’s lives — all for nothing.
Infectious Disease Physician Dr. Joshua Barocas of Boston Medical Center spoke at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. There he explained how bad the coronavirus pandemic is going to get, CNN reported:
‘It’s set up a perfect storm: the combination of travel, the combination of reopening — perhaps in some cases, too early — and the combination of people not necessarily following some of these preventive guidelines.’
Barocas said cases spiked in some states after Memorial Day. Thirty-seven states now trend upward in the number of cases from last week and only two states, New Jersey and Rhode Island trend downward:
‘I’m very concerned, especially given this coming weekend, that the same types of spikes, the same types of surges could be seen — not just in the places that are currently experiencing surges, but in places that have already experienced surges and in ones that haven’t yet.’
Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Dr. Ricardo Franco said:
‘[T]his surge in our prolonged first wave of infections, it’s very difficult to predict what might happen and the Fourth of July weekend could play a big role in this.’
Franco continued:
‘If you have bars, you have music. If you have music, you want to socialize. And you want to speak louder than usual so you can overcome the background noise.’
The official death counts may also be way underestimated. A new study just published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Wednesday discovered that between March and May of the pandemic, the “excess deaths” were 28 times greater than the official number.
Researchers found:
‘The gap between reported COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths can be influenced by several factors, including the intensity of testing; guidelines on the recording of deaths that are suspected to be related to COVID-19 but do not have a laboratory confirmation; and the location of death.’
Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci anticipated that the nation would have up to 100,000 cases of COVID-19 every single day. Other specialists anticipate that the number of people who have the virus but have not been tested was ten times that number.
Fauci appeared before Congress Tuesday and explained part of the problem:
‘Bars: really not good, really not good. Congregation at a bar, inside, is bad news. We really have got to stop that.’
When Fauci spoke before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, he said:
‘We are now having 40,000 cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.’
Thus far, 19 states have either paused reopening or completely changed the policy for reopening due to the influx of virus cases. After all, the coronavirus is a very deadly disease. At first, people believed that only those who were 60-year-old or older were vulnerable to the disease. Now, the specialists have found that the virus hits all ages, even healthy young people. It has moved from a respiratory illness to one of blood clots dispersed throughout people’s bodies.
There is much that is unknown about this disease. Why are there fatal cases that take the patient before they are fully checked into the hospital, while others have no symptoms? Why do some people have a strange array of symptoms such as losing the sense of smell, extreme joint pain, a headache in the center of their head, or 200 pustules (sores) over their legs? Why does the disease hit people of color more frequently? Are there two different strains of the virus, one that quickly causes deaths while the other “mild” cases linger for months?
- Texas, Colorado, and Delaware have either limited or closed their bars.
- California closed bars in seven counties over the weekend and will reconsider its options on Wednesday. It was coming close to 225,000 reported COVID-19 cases.
- Southern Florida will close all of its beaches in a line from Palm Beach all the way through Key West over the holiday.
- Other hotspot states reduce crowds by closing the bars, beaches, and closing down the firework events.
- A number of states make mask-wearing mandatory.
There are some creative solutions. CNN reported:
‘While other cities canceled fireworks to keep people from crowding together, places like Los Alamitos and Seal Beach, California, got creative. They’re jointly holding a “Drive-Up 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular” that bans pedestrians and includes temperature checks.’
CNN contributor and Associate Professor of Biology at the Unversity of Massachusetts, Dartmouth spoke about what states with rising numbers needed to do. Ones like Arizona, Florida, and Texas must get far more serious:
‘The dimmer switch approach works when you have case numbers under control. We saw New Jersey, we saw New York governors both say we might slow down on reopening restaurants — that’s a dimmer switch.’
‘When you get into Arizona numbers, Texas numbers, Florida numbers, that tiny adjustment that you make is not going to have the effect on turning those new infections around fast enough. You’ve got to come in with more of a hammer rather than a switch to control this now.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
