From the Whidbey Island News-Times:
COVID-19 uptick deemed no cause for alarm
Thirteen additional people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Island County in the last two weeks, putting the total at 195 since the start of the pandemic, according to Island County Public Health.
The number of deaths is still at 12 people.
Keith Higman, director of Island County Public Health, said the increase isn’t cause for panic.
The county isn’t investigating any clusters. Some of the cases were within families and some were associated with travel to other parts of the state.
“Our numbers look good,” he said, “compared to other places across the state and compared to other states.”
Higman said he believes nobody is currently hospitalized in the county with COVID-19.
Running the numbers, the US Census estimates Island County as having 85,141 citizens as of July 1st, 2019. Assuming for modest growth, let's make that 90K for now. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center puts the US at 2,936,007 Confirmed with 39.82 Deaths per 100K population. Island County has 10.8 Deaths per 100K population so we are doing pretty well.
The US Census estimates the United States population at 329,920,000. The number of Confirmed cases (2,936,007) is 0.889% of the total population. Island County Confirmed is 0.216% of the total population.
We are doing just fine - isolation really helps but the majority of the people here are just going about their daily lives. I travel to the mainland several times/week shopping at Costco and WalMart and I know many other people who do the same. Yes, the overall Confirmed numbers are up but that is an artifact of the enhanced testing. The critical numbers - mortality and hospitalization - are way down. Falling since April.
This thing is so overblown - political and not medical.
Leave a comment