Scariest thing about COVID-19 is information block on cases
This isn’t like a hurricane. The novel coronavirus won’t swoop in, destroy, and leave us in a matter of hours to rebuild.
This will require more steadiness and endurance from us, plus strategic planning to avoid chaos, social distancing to mitigate the spread, and patience to survive the times.
It is like a hurricane, however, in one way:
We’re all in this together.
Let’s not forget that what we do — or don’t do — affects not only our health, but that of others around us.
People in denial aren’t helping.
Neither are the crazies hoarding supplies, overwhelming doctors’ offices without appointments, arguing political positions during a health emergency, and all-around making a bad situation worse.
For an example of the latter, look no further than the Republican congressmen questioning the expertise of world-renowned expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has served six presidents and testified Wednesday before a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing.
His testimony on the severity of the outbreak publicly contradicted the dangerous optimism emanating from a White House on the campaign trail — and that got under their skin.
“We will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now,” Fauci said. “How much worse we’ll get will depend on our ability to do two things, to contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside, and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country. Bottom line, it’s going to get worse.”
I’m not ashamed to admit that his words, however necessary, scared and stressed me.
All the more so when I had to dash out to my neighborhood CVS to get my visiting daughter Tylenol — the only thing she can take to break a fever — and found emptying shelves in the “cold relief” aisle.
I took the last bottle, one with only 20 pills.
There was no need to hyper worry.
The next day I found stores well-stocked.
I learned the lesson that
I find reassurance in science and facts for orientation — and in preparation. And I’ve been preparing for a possible quarantine since we were first told by the experts to do so. And I’ve taken preventive action, as recommended.
I’m a journalist who talks to people for a living, but I’ve canceled face-to-face meetings with people who’ve recently traveled.
It’s not safe. In the age of technology, there are other options to communicate.
For what can happen when you don’t take precautions with foreign visitors, check in with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, and U.S. Senator Rick Scott.
They’re self-isolating and working from home after participating in a South Florida meeting attended by the Brazilian president and his press secretary, who tested positive for COVID-19. Journalists covering the event also are affected.
How disdainful of science could they possibly be?
Brazil is a hot spot for coronavirus; the country has the highest number of infected in Latin America.
There’s no denying that it’s not business as usual.
After more than 4,700 deaths attributed to CO
VID-19, the World Health Organization has declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic.
But we can do plenty, applying science and protocols, to mitigate it, WHO says.
“We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: All countries can still change the course of this pandemic,” WHO Director Tedros Adhanom said, explaining his declaration. “If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response, those with a handful of cases can prevent those cases becoming clusters, and those clusters becoming community transmission. Even those countries with community transmission or large clusters can turn the tide on this virus.”
STATE OF EMERGENCY IN FLORIDA
The state of Florida, at 70 cases as of this writing, has declared a state of emergency. Several of those cases are in Broward.
Miami-Dade has confirmed its first cases, and now we, too, are finally facing up to the reality that COVID-19 is here.
No, praying to saints and orishas didn’t spare us, and optimism only goes so far. The mayor has declared the disease a countywide emergency. Other counties and cities are doing the same. Events are being canceled, and
public places are being closed by the hour. Even Walt Disney World is closed.
The cancellations aren’t an exaggeration, as some are saying. It’s the right thing to do. It’s how we limit community transmission, which Vice President Mike Pence said Saturday has already started.
But there’s plenty of room for improvement. All we know about the first Miami case is that the patient is a 56-year-old male who traveled abroad.
It’s scary that we don’t know and won’t be told anything else.
Why?
Privacy laws, claim government officials, but they’re only hiding behind policies designed to protect us in our everyday dealings with the healthcare industry. When someone is killed in a crime or an accident, they become news, and the public has access to details.
With the coronavirus, we don’t need names.
But we do need basic information that would allow the rest of us to determine our level of exposure, to exclude or include in the categories of risk where we fall. Matters like the public places the infected person frequented — say, at least the area where he visited a drugstore when he felt sick — and how he may have gotten infected are important.
We don’t need the WHO, but we do need the
WHERE, WHY and HOW.
Knowledge is power against the spread of the virus.
Knowing empowers us to do our part to deal with the crisis.
Humor can help us keep it sane.
If it helps you cope better, call this Hurricane Corona.
Hold the lime and pass the Purell.