As people pay less and less attention to the safety rules of the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, we see more ending up in hospitals and dying, the leader of pandemic response for the Roanoke and Alleghany Health District warned us during her weekly update Tuesday.
Americans, Dr. Molly O’Dell, said people are simply “exhausted” and “tired of this” and are letting their guard down in more and more public events where masks and social distancing are absent.
“It’s the socialization that people are starving for,” O’Dell said. “Workers are tired of phone meetings.”
She points to an increase in weddings, funerals, baby showers and parties.
“People are tired of the constraints,” she adds.
Floyd County had just 20 cases of the virus with deaths at 3. Now, with 3 new cases and 3 deaths reported Tuesday, the county’s infection count is at 196, just shy of 200 with three deaths.
Virginia’s COVID-19 deaths passed 3,000 a couple of days ago and now stands at 3,060 with 142,010 infections and 10,675 hospitalizations. The United States passed 200,000 deaths this week with more than 7 million infections and deaths worldwide is approaching 1 million with a count Wednesday morning of 976,375.
With cooler weather, more kids in schools and colleges, and resumption of football at the college and pro levels, the numbers are rising again. At least 27 states and Puerto Rico have an increase in their seven-day averages. On Monday, Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Utah set record highs on Monday.
“I think we’re just in the beginning of what’s going to be a marked increase in cases in the fall. And it won’t be just a testing artifact, either. This is real,” says University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm.
Many of the recent outbreaks have been on college campuses, generating tension in college towns and throwing the first part of the academic year into chaos for millions of students.
In Madison, Wis., Dane County Executive Joe Parisi has repeatedly criticized University of Wisconsin officials who decided to bring students back to campus despite the high risk of new infections.
“We’re coming into that time of year when all of us around the nation are concerned about a second wave,” Parisi said in an interview. “My greatest fear is that this could be igniting that second wave a couple of months early.”
—The Washington Post
“Shaking hands and friendly hugging — everybody is tired of not being able to do that,” O’Dell told the briefing Tuesday, but she warned that the virus “doesn’t get tired.”
“This is easier for introverts,” Dr. O’Dell says. Most, she adds, “miss the socialization.”