It hasn’t been 17 years, although sometimes it seemed that way, but you’re not alone if you feel like a Brood X cicada emerging from a long underground hibernation as we shed our pandemic restrictions.
Many of us are stumbling around awkwardly as we try to remember how to do things like walk into a store without wearing a mask or speak to a stranger without mentally monitoring the air gap between bodies. “Hey are you vaccinated?” has become the question of the day. It’s a little unclear how many habits that we acquired to deal with COVID-19 can be put aside.
That uncertainty extends to us at the Monitor regarding the weekly COVID tracker, which marks its one-year anniversary this week. The question we’re debating is how, or whether, this feature should continue.
The tracker was started because we were overwhelmed with daily reports of epidemiology numbers and terms that we’d never encountered before, making it hard to know how bad (or good) things were in New Hampshire. Judging from reader response, it served this purpose; in my long reporting career, I have never been involved with anything that generated more spontaneous “thank you” emails.
But after a year of this, we’re all epidemiology veterans. We’re used to checking data points from the state Department of Health or various news organizations, and right now there isn’t much new to see: case counts, PCR positivity rate, deaths and hospitalizations are falling fast, and are almost as low as last summer.
So for the time being at least, there isn’t much for the tracker to report each week except “yep, we’re still good.” The question is, Dear Reader, should the tracker take a break?
The one concern with ending the tracker is that it might send a false signal that the pandemic is over, which is far from the case. News from around the world makes it clear that COVID-19 is still raging and can come rushing back at any time even in countries that were models of control early on, like Japan.
If the U.S. was fully vaccinated we could breathe easier but it’s depressingly obvious that this isn’t going to happen. Northern New England is pretty good on the vaccine front and if we were isolated I think we could stop worrying. But we’re not, so we can’t. Personally, I’m going to continue wearing a mask in stores, if for no other reason than to make those people who have to wear masks for medical reasons feel more comfortable.
With that in mind, let us know what you think. Should we end the tracker for the time being? Reduce it to just a weekly tally of numbers? Keep it going, even if that means it will be repetitive and probably kind of dull?
Send your opinion to news@cmonitor.com.
Daily updated charts and other information can be seen on the Monitor’s COVID-19 page at concordmonitor.com/coronavirus.
How are we doing on vaccinations? Plugging along.
Almost 60% of the state’s population has one dose and almost 50% are fully vaccinated, according to the state’s figures. We’re showing signs of nearing a ceiling, however: the number with one dose has hardly budged in the past week. If the fully vaccinated figures level off at that point, we’ll be well short of even minimal “herd immunity” counts.
Number of new cases – what’s the trend? Falling fast.
The two-week average of new cases has fallen for 47 days in a row (to be precise, on two of those days it stayed level), dropping from 434 in mid-April to 79 late last week. That’s still well above the levels of last summer when we were seeing as few as 20 new cases a day, but it seems like we’ll be at that point soon.
Number of hospitalizations – what’s the trend? Also low.
Fewer than 30 people are in the hospital with COVID-19 right now. That hasn’t happened since late October.
Number of deaths – what’s the trend? Finally falling.
We’ve had fewer than one death a day over the past two weeks. From a mortality perspective, COVID-19 is practically dormant, although any death is a tragedy.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
