I’m not sure how you feel, but I am definitely out of breath—having to continually chase after the goal post that continues to move on everything, Covid.
Every time we hit a lull in the metrics, something else gets pointed out about why we should continue to be very afraid.
I don’t know about you, but if I didn’t shut my TV off and turn down my radio, I’m not sure I could handle how stressed out I would be.
Take, for instance, things here in Cheshire County.
We get weekly updates of how the community is doing via Don Caruso, the CEO of Cheshire medical. He attempts to inform us or, some would say, misinform us on how the community is faring with Covid.
The Keene Sentinel pushes the narrative right along, and WKBK radio broadcasts the same message as far and wide as it can from 6-10 am.
We want to thank Timothy Carrier for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you want us to consider, please submit it to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
When you tell me you only have staff for one-third of the beds in the hospital that you had a year ago, then yes -that is a significant problem, but not for the reasons you are telling me. (And that’s an article for another day on the mismanaging and boondoggling of the Dartmouth family hospitals.)
Are people getting Covid in the area? Sure, they are. Are some people ending up in the hospital because of it? Yes. But are the numbers the crisis that you tell us they are?
Along comes a new metric to gauge how bad the spread of Covid is in our community. The percent of positivity rate.
Don and his cohorts in the local media jump right along with this one. He talked about that metric during the Keene city council meeting on mask mandates. He used it to tell the council that community transmission was very high.
We used to gauge things by the cases we were having, hospitalization numbers, and the deaths attributed to Covid and not comorbidities.
Sure, we still track those things, and you can find them out there for all to see. (I can’t seem to locate comorbidities in Covid deaths here in the state of New Hampshire.) But it must be that those numbers don’t push the panic porn.
What is the percent of positivity?
You don’t need a degree in mathematics or, quite frankly, a high school degree to understand this one, folks. Out of all the tests, what percentage of them are coming out positive.
We are told anything over 5% is too high, and over 10% shows a substantial spread of Covid in the area.
Bring this right up to your nose and give it a giant sniff.
Doesn’t pass the sniff test to me.
It could be that as a deplorable, maybe my brain hasn’t been so enlightened by Keene State academia, and that’s probably why I don’t understand this.
Please explain to me this one thing.
People who go to get a Covid test are either experiencing symptoms, or they’ve been in close contact with someone who has tested positive and is experiencing symptoms, right? Who in the heck of it decides at random to say, hey, let’s go let them touch my brain and see if I’m positive?
So, by default, wouldn’t you seem to have a higher positivity rate using this metric? If you want to sell me that it shows me how much the community is spreading Covid, then why wouldn’t you test random people out there in the community as a whole and see what that positivity rate is?
Last I checked, it is not those who are well who need a physician but those who are sick.
I wonder if we can apply this metric to our local repair garages. When everyone brings their car into the garage, what percentage of time a part needs to be replaced. If it’s above 10% or even 25%, then we have a junk car problem spreading around the community.
Once again, take this metric, put it up to your nose, and give it a good sniff. I’ll tell you exactly what I can smell.
