By Emily Woodbury
Last Wednesday, March 25th, we asked if you know anyone who has gotten the coronavirus. But, before I get started, let me address a comment left by reader Greg H. Greg wrote, “Your poll question today is a little misleading. Since we haven’t done extensive testing for COVID-19 in this country, those who answered ‘no’ really have no idea whether they know anyone with the virus. They’re currently predicting that for every one diagnosed, there are probably 10 who are infected but are not yet showing symptoms.” Yes! Thank you for mentioning this, Greg. It’s true. You may have had COVID-19 and not even known it, a family member could have, a friend, etc. Some (in fact many) people are asymptomatic. OK, now with that being said…
Let’s run through the more than 4,000 results here… Luckily, 84 percent of you answered no, nobody you know has gotten the coronavirus (that you know of, at least, as we just talked about). However, 10 percent of you know someone who knows someone who has. A small 4 percent of you have an acquaintance who has or who has had the virus, and 2 percent of you have someone close to you who has had the virus. Lastly, there were 17 of you (even though the percentage was 0) who said that you have had or currently have the virus. Yikes! I hope you are well and recovered!
Since we asked this question more than a week ago, we’ll probably ask it again soon, to see if your answers have changed, so keep an eye out for that. Though I can hope the percentages won’t increase, I can only imagine that they will.
Take care of yourself, and as editor Chuck Woodbury would say, “Go wash your hands!”
Kerrville Texas has reported 2 cases of Covid-19, one person works in San Antonio and the other went to Mexico for spring break. there are 40,000 plus living here, half of them are snowbirds, we hear most will not go back to where they came from until this pandemic is over.
Emily if Greg’s numbers have any truth to fact (they don’t) that “for every one diagnosed there are probably 10 infected……..” the population would be in trouble – if the same percentage were actually dying.
In actual fact the percentages of those who have contacted the virus v/s those who succumb to it are very very small, check previous death rates due common cold, pneumonia and flu that abound annually to put this in perspective – you’ll be amazed at how small the numbers due C-19 are in comparison.
The media driving this panic is not providing the balanced picture – we must seek it out individually . What Steven Stills said decades ago in his famous song “there’s something happening here – what it is ain’t exactly clear” still applies today.
I find the whole thing disheartening & disturbing that we don’t benefit from the same vigour in reporting numbers of those who contact C-19 (or any other illness) who have recovered fully.
I’d enjoy balanced reading about the percentage of those who’ve contacted C-19 and survived who are not longer a threat – there’s something bigger to this than what we’ve getting and I’m plenty ticked off about the fact so many folks are not kicking back and looking deeper into this – following like sheep to the slaughter.
I’m taking the high road – calling the panic BS. Sure we have some trouble here requiring caution, which is being taken – BUT shutting down the world to mitigate it- having much of the worlds population on the run like a pack of wolves on a herd of Caribou – is plain ludicrous.
I know I would like knowing, how many deaths from the flu were because the person did not have a flu shot.