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At this point, almost everyone in our area has had contact with “someone-who-was-around-someone” who had COVID.

I recommend that you continue to social distance, to wear a mask when social distancing is not possible, to avoid crowded spaces, to wash your hands regularly, stay home if you’re not feeling well, follow quarantine protocols and to get vaccinated.

While the worst cases are characterized by fever and severe cough and breathing issues, most cases look nothing like that. So, what exactly does COVID look like?

The graph here shows how average weekly deaths due to these six causes compare with recent COVID weekly deaths since May 3. As you can see, coming out of our shelter-in-place order we were averaging about as many deaths per week (about 200) as stroke, lung disease and accidents each cause in a typical week. However, following that we saw a sharp increase in COVID cases, and about a month ago we started seeing a sharp increase in deaths.

At this point, almost everyone in our area has had contact with “someone-who-was-around-someone” who had COVID. There are no specific guidelines for these situations, but I think some general measures are appropriate.

There is a specific chain of events that must happen for an infection, in this case coronavirus, to spread from an infected person to another person. This chain creates many opportunities to prevent the spread of infection, but to effectively stop this process, we need to leverage as many of those opportunities as possible.

For many reasons – economic, mental health, religious, physical health, relationships, education, etc – all of us are eager to re-enter the outside world in the ways we did before. And, as governmental restrictions relax, and people are left to make their own decisions, many are wondering if it is safe for them to re-enter society. And, the answer is simple – it depends.

If you’re asking is it as safe now to gather publicly as it was prior to this pandemic,

With the continued (but, hopefully, slowing) spread of COVID-19, there is a lot of discussion about the need for more testing. But what are we testing? How does it work? What does it mean?

Nasal Swab Testing –

We are about 2 weeks out from the CDC recommendation to wear masks in public places (in addition to social distancing, hand washing, etc). But, locally, it seem like the utilization of masks (and, I'm talking about cloth face coverings, not surgical masks or N95s) is pretty low. In response to that, I thought I might offer a possible change in perspective.

Wearing a mask is not about protecting yourself.