Don’t Be Fooled

Today is Monday, July (checks calendar) 13th and this is your periodic reminder that the reason that COVID-19 has not completely decimated Howard County is not because it isn't all that bad. It’s because our local government chose to handle it responsibly, and many local institutions are backing them up. A lot of local citizens are choosing to follow suit. 

It takes a lot of work to do all this, whether at the county governmental level or the hospital or in local businesses. You’ll forgive me if I’m beyond frustrated when people look at the successes brought about by these coordinated efforts and say, “See? It’s not a big deal at all!”

So let’s open all the businesses! Let’s send the teachers and students back to school! All these restrictions are inconvenient and unnecessary!

That’s not how this works, folks. As the advert says, “That’s not how any of this works.”

I’d like to give a shout-out today to the Howard County Health Department. They have been running information about how ordinary people in Columbia/HoCo can respond to the COVID-19 pandemic on their Twitter account for quite some time now. They have helpful links to online events. They use humorous memes to communicate public health information. They respond to questions in a timely manner!

If you don’t already follow them on Twitter, you should. Over the last few months they’ve become my unofficial pandemic buddies on social media. For a small example, check out this thread on contact tracing:

Contact tracers: are there enough of them? What do they do?

I just discovered that this quote, which I’ve loved for years, is attributed to actor Michael Caine. Who knew?

Be a duck, remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.

When it comes to assessing the seriousness of COVID-19 in Howard County, there are clearly some people who are fooled by how calm things look on the surface. This is probably because they are not remotely connected to how much paddling is going on underneath.

If you want to see what “no big deal at all!” looks like, I’d suggest you take a look at Florida.