Time to plan for the re-opening of our state and county
As of Tuesday, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), one of the main organizations providing modeling for and tracking of the statistics of the coronavirus pandemic, showed Kansas was two days past the projected peak in daily deaths from COVID-19 and four days past the projected peak resource use. The IHME projections predict a total of 187 deaths in Kansas. We hit 100 deaths on Monday. So far, .013 percent of the state’s population has been hospitalized because of COVID-19.
In the United States, we were shown as six days past the projected peak in daily deaths and seven days past peak resource use. The modeling projects 60,308 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States, well under the 120,000+ that were predicted just a couple weeks ago.
On both the state and national level, the pandemic seems to be on the good side of the peak.
The total cases reported in Kansas continue to increase and that growth may continue as the state increases its testing capabilities, but we are past the worst of this crisis.
Any way you look at it, this pandemic is not what it was originally touted to be. Thank God.
Still very serious, but the original headlines of millions of people dying from this pandemic will not happen. The data is now starting to prove that.
Now, it is imperative that we develop a plan to start safely lifting restrictions and re-opening the economy. The school closings, limits to mass gatherings, stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions were all ordered with the hope of holding back the mass carnage so that we could keep hospitalizations and medical resources within the country’s capacity. They were not in place to keep the official count of COVID-19 cases at zero.
It is still very likely we’ll see positive cases in counties that currently have no official cases. But we can stay concerned about the crisis while planning steps to get back to normal. Statewide stay-at-home orders are not necessary. Several states around us, like Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa and South Dakota, resisted stay-at-home orders. Restriction levels can be much more localized, reflecting the seriousness of the areas they represent. Wyandotte County is not the same as Washington County and they shouldn’t have the exact same restrictions in place.
If we personally strive to continue all of the hygienic and social distancing measures we’ve gotten used to over the last five weeks, we can return some normalcy while still protecting public health. We need to do this because it is the right thing to do for the sake of our neighbors, not because the government told us to.
The re-opening cannot last deep into the fall. Rather than leading with government mandates, this country must get back to a push of personal responsibility.
Depression, joblessness, loneliness and fear have measurable negative effects on people and that should be our new focus. If the nation, state or county waits too long to return to normalcy, we’ll see death and despair among our friends and neighbors from those concerns rather than COVID-19. This is now the more urgent crisis on which to focus our public health efforts.
Dan Thalmann
Owner - Washington County News, Washington, Kansas