State’s COVID-19 death toll outpaces several wars
It’s time — once again — for decisive action
The summer fooled us into thinking we had it within our power to bring the coronavirus under control in Connecticut. After a devastating Spring in which Connecticut became one of the deadliest states, strong action on the part of government, business — and most of us — flattened the curve and brought infection rates down. By the summer, we had gone from being among the hardest hit states to being among the safest.
But COVID-19 was lurking. We know this now. The daily reports out of Gov. Ned Lamont’s office are striking. We’ve seen positive infection rates climb above 7 percent and Wednesday’s daily death toll of 51 men and women was the worst single day we experienced in more than six months. All told — more Connecticut residents have now died from coronavirus than were killed in World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined.
The numbers as of November 3 are 5,111 and 4,930, respectively. And these aren’t just numbers. These are wives and husbands, mothers
and fathers, daughters and sons.
We know how to turn this around. We’ve done it once already — and the answer isn’t to wait for a vaccine. While the headlines gabbing attention focus on how a vaccination program could begin as early as this month, public health experts are saying it will be late spring or summer before it will be available in the quantities needed to achieve widespread immunity.
To flatten the curve now, we need — once again — to pull back,
drastically reduce the size of public and private gatherings, limit the number of people going to and from work and make sure residents stay at home unless it’s necessary to go out. Wearing masks and trying to stay 6 feet apart are important but isn’t really cutting it — as the numbers prove.
That will mean taking a painful step or two backward.
It will mean implementing unpopular measures that could include restricting indoor dining and religious gatherings, requiring businesses that have the capacity to work remotely to close their offices and working with institutions of higher education across the state to limit off-campus housing and gatherings.
It will mean cracking down on violators. The town of Manchester, by the admission of its own officials, made half-a-dozen visits to the Hungry Tiger bar and restaurant before finally clamping down — only to allow it to swiftly reopen. The city of New Haven, in contrast, is moving aggressively against rule breakers in a bid to contain the virus.
Most of all, it will mean another wave of financial hardship and potential isolation for those whose lives and livelihoods have been upended. One of the lingering images of 2020 will be the long lines of people waiting at food distribution events. The long-term effects on children who have not engaged in remote learning are yet to be known.
But we also know — because we’ve been through this once — that the faster and more decisively we act, the better off we will eventually be. Medical experts are now acutely aware of just how incredibly contagious the virus is, that those showing no symptoms can transmit COVID-19 and that the risk of transmission indoors is vastly greater than when outside.
So while it may seem counterintuitive, the reality is that the sooner and more decisively we act, the better off we will eventually be. One of the reasons Connecticut had an enviable low transmission rate this summer was the aggressive action taken in the Spring.
The longer we wait, the worse the situation will get and the longer it will take to get under control. It’s a math equation.
Gov. Lamont knows the math and his reluctance to impose another round of restrictions has sparked criticism from medical experts, who have circulated a petition calling for more extreme social distancing measures. Back in March, it took a couple of weeks between the time when coronavirus began tearing a path across Connecticut and Lamont issued executive orders shutting down parts of the state. Could more lives have been saved with faster action? Probably, though in fairness, we didn’t know then what we know now.
Now we know. Now it’s time to act.