Last test of 2020: Being responsible about virus over holidays
After nine long months amid the worst pandemic in a century, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Health care workers and nursing home residents are getting vaccinated. A second vaccine just received final federal approval.
But we’re approaching the most difficult test of the year this week: Christmas and a week later, the New Year’s holiday, when family and friends will be tempted to gather in celebration.
We want to issue another reminder: Don’t do it.
We’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we cannot let down our guard against this deadly virus. The numbers are already dire: On Friday, the Illinois coronavirus death toll surpassed 15,000. The nationwide death toll is approaching 313,000 and is now increasing daily by more than 3,000.
None of us should take a chance and risk including our friends and family, and ourselves, among those numbers.
The day before Thanksgiving, Americans traveled in record numbers, against the advice of health care experts. More than a million people were screened at airport checkpoints nationwide, one of the highest traveling numbers since the pandemic began, according to a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration.
Weeks later, the post- Thanksgiving surge has put the country in the midst of a terrible stretch of the pandemic. Hospitalizations as well as deaths are on a steep rise, setting records and forcing some hospitals to turn away patients for lack of ICU beds.
If we don’t sacrifice during this the last stretch of the 2020 holiday season, experts predict a grim start to the new year. COVID- 19 deaths are expected to increase over the next couple of weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death toll could reach over 360,000 by Jan. 2.
“One thing this vaccine will not solve, or cure, is selfishness or indifference to what is happening to our neighbors around us,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said last week.
In Illinois, experts say we are heading in the right direction as the state’s test positivity rate has fallen from 10.3% to below 8%.
Let’s keep doing the right thing, all the way through to the new year.