The City of Nashua has required masks indoors for months (except for the ‘crats in Town Hall, or so I hear). Not one of the surrounding communities has a mask mandate. So, it might surprise some that today Nashua has gone code red from a COVID19 infection spike.
Related: New Study – Odds of Dying from COVID19 if You are 50-64 are 1 in 1.67 Million*
What does “infection spike” mean?
“Our new cases per 100,000 is at about 100.7, which is what pushed us from moderate community-level transmission to substantial community-level transmission,” said Nashua epidemiologist Angela Consentino.
Substantial community transmission. That sounds serious but is it?
In a city with a population of 90,000, it means that seventy -three people (0.08% of residents) currently “test positive” for the famous flu.
Seventy-Four-year old, overweight, Donald Trump survived it. People age 50-64 have a 1 in 1.67 million chance of getting ill enough to leave this world. Younger folk will discover their odd are significantly lower. And in Nashua, 73 positive tests – which does not mean symptomatic or even ill – is a crisis.
And the secret ingredient, as we all know, is that you can test people until you get to a number that satisfies the political action you want. It’s a crisis!
Related: A Month After Statewide Mask Mandate COVID19 Cases in CA Up 168%
So what else does this really mean? Well, none of the six towns in the greater Nashua area have a mask mandate. They have 80,000 plus population. (I included Hollis, Brookline, Amherst, Merrimack, Litchfield, and Hudson). Combined, they have fewer cases than Nashua. But, but…
Consentino said the COVID-19 numbers in Nashua and the rest of the state have been trending up for the past month as schools reopen and the weather turns colder. She said each individual case is also having more of an impact.
“That means each case is exposing more than they did in the spring which, in the long run, leads to more cases,” she said.
Winter is coming. It will be a lot like being locked down. The casedemic will get a real shot in the arm. And that still means almost nothing.
Because while it is critically important to quarantine those who are actually at risk, 98% of us are not. And we’ve no accounting of the people whose lives have been ruined or ended with the political response. Shouldn’t we stop and consider the damage that is doing? What if it is greater?
Nope.
Nobody is reporting those numbers in the paper daily, on the local Patch.com, on TV, or anywhere else. Because we’re not checking for that. Jobs lost or stolen by the response. Lives lost or stolen?
Would it change anything?
As I observed way back in May (“Public Health” is Just Another Mule for Tyranny), the American experiment was never about “how to perfect people or their government. It was how [to] confine the conflagration of human vices in those drawn to government service so that they do the least amount of damage.”
We let the clinical police state horse out of the barn and it doesn’t look like enough people are interested in finding a way to put it back.
Or maybe there are and we have to wait for an election to find out.
Note: At present we have 492 active cases statewide (whatever that really means) which is 0.036% of the state population.
Note 2: Manchester, the largest city in the state, has no mask mandate and 73 cases.
