I’m checking the new case a couple of times a week, consistent with most states now reporting data about once a week.
There’s nothing new to report. Depending on how I choose to gap-fill the spotty state data, the new case rates are either level or falling slightly.
Per the CDC, we still have about 350 COVID-19 deaths a day. It’s been around that level for months now.
And we’re back over 4000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations a day. That figure had gotten down close to 3000 a day, as of a month or so ago. But respiratory (and cardiovascular) hospitalizations always increase with colder weather. So that increase is likely as much a result of winter as of any new spread of COVID.
In short, we’re stuck in neutral. No winter wave. But no fading away, either.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 12/20/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Have we learned anything?
I hate to be one of those guys who takes the behavior of a single bad actor, and writes that up as if it shows that Something is Wrong with America.
But sometimes, it’s just so damn much fun that I can’t help it.
Anyway, my wife and I went to the gym today, as usual. Both masked, me with a 3M N95, my wife with a Kimberly-Clark duckbill. Wiping down each machine after every use, with sanitizer, as directed. Keeping our distance from others, as possible. And just generally being chill and getting on with our lives.
So, picture a fat old guy in a mask, minding his own business, plodding along on the last treadmill in the row, as far away from the other treadmill users as possible.
Now imagine you are young woman with an obvious and quite active upper respiratory infection. Constantly sniffling, wiping your nose, sneezing violently every couple of minutes. And yet, determined to come down to the public gym and do your six-minute workout on the elliptical.
Maskless, of course. Do I even need to say that? Or does it go without saying?
Question: Given an entire row of empty elliptical machines, which is the only possible elliptical machine you, as an obviously ill young person, could choose?
The one next to the paranoid old guy in the N95. Of course. Do I even need to say that? Or does it go without saying?
Had there been some other treadmill I could move to, distanced from other users, I’d have stopped and moved. But there wasn’t, so I just toughed it out.
So here’s the funny part. After a pair of particularly violent sneezes, I turned my face away from the sneezer. Hoping to catch some cleaner air, or something. And there I end up locking eyes with a personal trainer, two machines over, who’s looking to see who the idiot is, and instead, sees this old dude masked to the nines.
Now, I do not have a thing in common with this guy. He’s young, Black, and in great shape. I’m old, White, and not.
I roll my eyes. He laughs. We are on the same page regarding Ms. Sneeze. We go back to our respective workouts. Life goes on.
So, no, some people still haven’t figured out that it’s not a great idea to come to the gym when you are obviously sick. Not post-COVID. Not during the worst flu year in two decades. Ergo, probably not ever.
But some of us get it. I guess the best I can hope for is that more of us get it now, than used to.
