This Thanksgiving, stay home, stay well
Listen to the experts, do the math, then cancel any plans you have for getting sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner with anyone but immediate family, please. COVID-19 is making yet another comeback. Its impact on 2020 could not be any clearer. Protect yourself, your families and multitudes of people you don’t even know.
Sit this one out. Zoom your holiday greetings.
We’re programmed to yearn for the touchy-feely televisioncommercial-type of togetherness at this time of year. But, don’t fall for it this time. Stay home, don’t travel. Don’t invite people who don’t live in your home for turkey dinner.
Not in this dreadful COVID-19 year. And not when the pandemic is spiking across the country, including South Florida. Don’t travel to celebrate in another household or host people outside your home, even though you know they are alone for Thanksgiving.
Fight the human need to gather for Thanksgiving, and the rest of the holiday season.
Don’t just take our word for it. The CDC came out Thursday and said as much, discouraging travel for Thanksgiving — the official launch to the annual holiday season.
“There is no more important time than now for each and every American to redouble our efforts to watch our distance, wash our hands and, most importantly, wear a mask,” said Dr. Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager.
The CDC warns that in-person gatherings, which bring together family members or friends from different households, including college students returning home, pose varying levels of risk.
This is no exaggeration. In Miami-Dade we have seen the number of cases rising as if it were the beginning of summer.
Over the past week, rising cases and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have confirmed fears among Miami-Dade officials that a third wave of the virus would flare up around Thanksgiving week.
On Thursday, Florida’s Department of Health confirmed 9,085 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state’s known total to 914,333. Also, 79 resident deaths were announced, bringing the resident death toll to 17,810.
Miami-Dade reported 1,945 additional confirmed cases of
COVID-19 and seven new deaths.
It shouldn’t be this difficult to convince members of the community to give a damn about the people they love most. Too many here, and across the country already have shown — by going
brazenly maskless in public — that they don’t care much about anyone else.
This is the time of year that platitudes of love and caring are inescapable, but it is up to every to prove that those are not just empty sentiments.