Clarksdale, Mississippi and the nation have poked their heads up out of the sand and are now talking about how we are going to extract ourselve from the shutdown of 2020.
Blame it on CNN, New York Mayor Como, President Donald Trump or our local officials if you like.
Rather than blame someone, I want to take a look at the numbers and see what they can tell us.
60 Days
Wyatt Emmerich in a column in the Northside Sun said that’s how long it takes COVID-19 deaths to start up and then come back down.
“It’s called Farr’s Law,” he explained. “It’s almost exactly the same in every single country throughout the world. If you don’t realize this, please educate yourself by going to one of the COVID-19 statistical websites. I recommend worldometer.com.
“This 60 days is remarkably consistent regardless of public lockdown policy. It was 60 days in Italy with its strict lockdown. It was 60 days in Sweden with its limited social distancing policy.”
Here in Mississippi, we’ve had lock down for 60 days.” he adds. That’s enough. Time to move on.
I realize we are trying to minimize deaths. As of today (May 4), the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has documented 38,576 COVID-19 deaths. That’s a little over half the 61,000 deaths caused by the flu season of 2017-18. These U.S. stats are available online at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs-/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/”
We all make better decision if we have the time to think about them.
Seven facts
• As of this morning we have no new cases due to coronavirus in Coahoma County. We do have 70 cases of the disease reported as of Tuesday with an estimated 50 of those cases cured.
• CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 flu season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations and 34,200 deaths from influenza (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html).
• The current 2019-2020 flu season is on track to be one of the worst in a decade. Between 19-26 million people have caught the flu since October and between 10,000-25,000 people have died. But as bad as the seasonal flu is this year, it pales in comparison to some of the biggest flu pandemics in history.
• According to the CDC, an estimated 500 million people — or 1/3rd of the world’s population — caught the Spanish Flu during the 1918-19 pandemic and between 50 million and 100 million people were killed. 675,000 died in the United States alone. Some victims died within mere hours or days of developing symptoms.
• According to the CDC, approximately 1 million people around the world died from the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968, and 100,000 of those deaths occurred in the United States.
• The CDC estimates that between 151,700 and 575,400 people died worldwide during the first year that the H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus circulated. About 80-percent of those deaths are believed to have been people younger than 65 — which is unusual. During typical seasonal influenza epidemics, 70-90-percent of deaths occur in people over 65.
• Coahoma County had a population of 22,628 according to 2018 census estimates. As of today 0.309-percent of the county's population has been diagnosed with the disease with most homes and businesses not having any family member or employee who has become sick.
Mother’s Day No. 60
We head to see my mother on Sunday. We've celebrated 60 Mother's Days together.
This Mother’s Day I hope you are blessed to wear a red rose to church. It was mother who taught me the meaning of wearing a red or white rose on Mother’s Day.
She was the one who showed me the way to avoid an eternal death and how to face a physical death with faith and no fear.
I’ve said in this space before that my main concern about COVID-19 is it might take my mother from me.
She pointed out the other day that taking her from me puts her in the bosom of someone else.
I really didn’t want to hear that but her point about not living life in fear was well taken.
It takes courage to live in this world. It also takes faith and facts.
Enjoy Sunday, hug your mother if you can and live life knowing not one of us is promised tomorrow.
Floyd Ingram is the Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register and the first born of Mary J. Ingram. Call him at 662-627-2201 to discuss his decisions, the facts and his good fortune.
