“I’ll stay home for Christmas, you can count on me...”
— Bing Crosby, if he were singing in 2020, perhaps
Yep, the famous song lyric needs to change just a little this Christmas. Too many of us are giving each other COVID-19, and it’s a gift you definitely do not want to give or receive.
This year, as much as it hurts our hearts, we need to simplify our Christmas party plans. And by that, I mean we need to stay home and stay apart.
Folks, we’re almost through this. The first vaccine has arrived, and while it’s in short supply at the moment, there should be enough for everyone who wants it by this summer.
Until then, we have to be more vigilant than ever. This virus is sweeping across our nation and through our local community. It’s far worse than what we experienced in the spring. This week three more Lewis County people died due to the virus, including someone in their 50s. That makes 21 deaths from COVID-19 in Lewis County since March.
On Monday of this week America hit the grim milestone of 300,000 people killed by the novel coronavirus, and as I write this, we’re already up to 311,000 dead.
This thing is going viral, and it’s coming to a Christmas party near you.
Because of how long this still-mysterious disease typically takes to kill someone (after weeks of worsening symptoms and hospitalization), the people dying today aren’t even yet the ones infected over Thanksgiving.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
A good friend from my workplace has an example.
Her family had a big gathering on Thanksgiving. Like many people around the country, they felt pretty laid back. This thing is a hoax, they told themselves, or at least not a big deal. My coworker, who takes this virus seriously, didn’t attend.
Someone at the gathering was sick but didn’t know it. Symptoms started showing up in guests within a few days.
Some came near to needing admittance to a hospital. Her brother-in-law, an avid runner and cyclist with no co-morbidities, could barely get out of bed. Carrying a box across the room still exhausts him.
My friend’s mom, who is in the middle of chemotherapy, had to delay her treatments because of this.
“I requested that my family mask up around my Mom when she was diagnosed with cancer,” my friend told me. “This request was treated as an overreaction. I was just being ‘dramatic.’”
Locally, we have a harrowing story from Chehalis City Councilman Chad Taylor. I respect that Chad went public with his story after being admitted to the hospital and having a very serious illness after being infected with COVID-19.
“The breathing is the worst (part),” Taylor, 42, told the newspaper a few weeks ago, his conversation wracked with deep, rattling coughs.
On Thursday the United States had 238,189 new cases reported — nearly a quarter million! — and 3,293 deaths. (For comparison, 2,605 people were killed during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, so we’re killing more than a 9/11’s worth of Americans every single day from COVID-19.)
Simple math shows a 1.4 percent death rate, although the actual death numbers lag infections by several weeks, so the actual death rate is probably higher.
And even if you don’t die, that doesn’t mean the disease leaves you unscarred.
My coworker, in telling me about her family’s superspreader Thanksgiving dinner, also noted that she had a friend infected with COVID-19 back in the spring whose achy, tired flu-like symptoms have never gone away, nearly 300 days later.
“Her life is basically wrecked,” my coworker said. “She can’t do anything, really. Her statement was, ‘What if you caught the flu one day, and it just never went away?’”
Many folks in our community are still determined not to let this change their lives. Protest rallies, eating out in restaurants, going maskless — it’s a way to hold onto freedom, they say.
I wonder about the freedom of the rest of us.
I think of Dr. Carlos Araujo-Preza, critical care medical director for a hospital in Houston. Since the start of the pandemic, he’s been treating the hardest-hit patients. On Nov. 30, Dr. Araujo-Preza died of COVID-19 in the same critical care unit.
He was 51 years old when COVID-19 took his life. What about his freedom?
If you’re not concerned about infecting yourself or your family members during Christmas parties, maybe spare a thought for the doctors, nurses and hospital staff that might just have to treat you — and risk exposure yet again — because of infections that could be going around your party as an evil twin of the Christmas spirit.
It’s OK to change your mind on this thing, by the way. If you were a skeptic before but are persuaded now by evidence, that’s just fine.
A friend responded to a Facebook post of mine about COVID-19 a few days ago by saying this: “For some like myself acceptance of the truth was clouded by something I can only describe as delusional, as I was trying to write science to fit my lifestyle. Not any more.”
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Brian Mittge will enjoy Christmas at home, and will be dreaming about how great next year’s in-person celebrations are going to be. Drop him a line at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
