I originally planned to post my old notes on Coronavirus each day until I reached the present. I assumed by then things would have reached some equilibrium and there might be little to say.
That changed yesterday. I saw the number of cases of Coronavirus in the state had more than doubled in three days. Wikipedia says we had 136 cases on March 26 and 191 on March 27, a 40% increase. By March 31, the total was up to 315.
That sounds alarming, as if everything we’d done to stop the spread had been futile. However, the case isn’t quite so glum if one applies the 18-day time lag. Individuals who tested positive on March 27 were exposed sometime after March 10. The governor closed the schools on March 13, just as she was getting indications the problem could be serious.
Non-essential businesses were closed March 23, which means their latest onset date for Coronavirus for that action would be this Friday, April 10. The storm is still gathering.
My problem wasn’t with the statistics, but that I didn’t know it was happening. I checked the internet every night, and little was reported. Rio Arriba County’s total cases remained officially at two. Now it’s four.
One sometimes wonders why Fox is more popular than our local television stations, and why people ready The New York Times rather than local papers. Fox broadcasts what people want to hear. Not everything may be true, but something is better than no information in a time of crises.
The local television stations were posting stories that were a day or two old, then stopped.
Their failure to rise to the occasion forced me to find other sources. First it was a Politico website that only provided state totals. Then it was Wikipedia which has more detailed information, but only through March 31 as of this morning.
It was The New York Times that alerted me the doubling in the number of cases. It only brought its website online yesterday, and, unlike some local newspapers, has made its coverage of Coronavirus available to everyone, not just subscribers.
The title for this section of this blog is taken from a novel written in 1722 by Daniel Defoe about the London plague of 1665. I also could have borrowed a title from a novel by Gabriel García Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera. Both books have dropped in demand on Amazon since I last looked. Currently the García Marquez book ranks 873, down from 736. Many editions of Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year are available. The best selling one now ranks 4,103, down from 1,323. His style is much harder to read.
Sources:
The New York Times website. Tab US Cases. Tab Select a State.
Politico website. "How Many Coronavirus Cases Have Been Found in Each U.S. State?"
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico."
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