Thread by @saradannerdukic

Some perspective if you’re in an area where everything’s open and you’re wondering if you’re crazy for being cautious and worried.

We seem have boiling frog syndrome when it comes to COVID. There’s a lot of focus on downward trends, w/ little attention given to the fact that our levels are worse than countries instituting much stricter measures...

or that our current levels have merely gone from mind-blowingly horrible to the slightly less mind-blowingly horrible levels of early fall.

With the numbers we have in Hamilton County (over 300/100K), other countries would be on total lockdown right now.

For example, in Tuscany, Italy, their cases are at 56.49/100K, putting them in the “zona arancione.”
ars.toscana.it/banche-dati/da…

lanazione.it/cronaca/la-tos…

In Italy, the “zona arancione” (orange zone) means:
-bars and restaurants closed all day
-you can’t leave the city of your residence
-schools are open only for younger kids; all older kids must learn remotely
-universities go to remote learning

corriere.it/cronache/21_fe…

Let’s look at Emilia-Romagna, which on Friday is going into lockdown. The positivity rate in that province is 6.75%. They are now a “zona arancione scuro” (dark orange; worse than orange).

As of Friday, the following will be prohibited:
-everything for “zona arancione,” plus
-visits with relatives and friends
-school/daycare for kids over 3
-sports other than doing something alone, outside
-museums and cultural exhibits

bologna.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/0…

(Here is the source for the positivity rate)
statistichecoronavirus.it/coronavirus-it…

Here in Hamilton County, Ohio, with cases more than 5x worse than the zone arancioni in Italy and a positivity rate of 9.1%:
-bars, restaurants, concert halls, everything open
-go anywhere, fly anywhere

-moms are "embarrassed" at soccer + hockey games w/other districts that our schools aren’t fully open
-school board still kicking around the idea of 3 feet of “distancing”
-universities open

By the way, the majority of cases in Italy right now? People under 50, and kids.
epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/sa…

Just…some perspective.

Also, Europe is getting hammered by the variants.

forbes.com/sites/williamh…

The variants are here too, along with our own home-grown ones. latimes.com/science/story/…

This time last year, we lacked the tools to see and understand what danger was at our door. One year later, we still lack them. washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01…

Uncontrolled spread continues to be the number one danger in our communities, because that's also what brings us the mutations. theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

So...you're not crazy, keep being careful, keep wearing your mask, and we still don't have the luxury of doing things that involve sharing air with strangers just 'cause they're fun and we're sick of this sh*t.

Sorry, this statement isn’t completely accurate in that our measurements here are 14-day average and Italy is single day. That said, our school board voted to open schools when our county had worse comparative levels than what Tuscany is experiencing rn.

https://twitter.com/saradannerdukic/status/1364800596608434176?s=20

And not only did they vote to open when levels were worse, they voted for one over-crowded high school to do it with only 3 feet of distancing (aka no distancing).