Two days after the election and COVID-19 has not disappeared.
This comes as no great shock to the majority of people, but for the very vocal minority who declared the coronavirus would go poof after Nov. 3, this may be a surprise.
Not only is COVID-19 still around, but it’s getting worse. Nationally, the trendline is up and hospitalizations are spiking — and that’s true for West Virginia, too.
According to the data available at the time of this writing, coronavirus cases are trending up, with 394 new cases in the Mountain State in the last 24 hours and three new deaths (up to 372 Wednesday from 369 Tuesday). The state’s trendline for hospitalizations is still going up and so are the trendlines for COVID patients in the ICU and on ventilators. West Virginia’s daily percent positivity on Wednesday was 4.88% and the cumulative is inching ever closer to 3%.
It’s a little scary to look at the Johns Hopkins or Harvard COVID maps and see the large swath of red covering almost all states west of West Virginia and east of California. America’s heartland is getting hit hard by this so-called “third wave” of coronavirus. To be honest, though, we’re not sure the United States ever really finished its first wave.
Nationally, we’re nearing 10 million confirmed cases and we’ve officially passed 230,000 deaths. The CDC’s bar graph of daily cases since January looks like a rollercoaster, where each crest dips only slightly before rocketing even higher — and the longer this ride goes on, the more nauseated we get.
There’s a part of us that wishes COVID-19 had disappeared after the last ballot was cast. Then we could look forward to spending the holiday season as we normally would, without worrying about the dangers of in-person Christmas shopping or the potentially fatal consequences of inviting the grandparents to Thanksgiving dinner. But wishing the pandemic away doesn’t work, and magical thinking doesn’t change reality.
We’re hopeful that now the election is technically over — in the sense that there are no more ballots to cast, only votes to count — that the coronavirus will stop being wielded as a political weapon. COVID doesn’t care if you vote red or blue or neither. It doesn’t care about the words or promises or platitudes of politicians. It doesn’t care if you believe it’s real or not. A virus’ only purpose is to replicate itself and ensure its own survival — humans just happen to be a means to accomplish that end and a virus does not choose whom to infect based on political leanings.
COVID-19 is real. The pandemic is not over. The pandemic will not be over anytime soon. A vaccine is in progress, but it’s hard to tell when it will be available to the general public. In the meantime, the best thing we can do to protect ourselves and each other is to wear our masks in public places or when gathered with people from different households, maintain social distancing, wash our hands frequently and thoroughly and have compassion for each other.
If you won’t take precautions for your sake, take them for the sake of everyone your actions will impact. You may save a life.
