Are you tired of shaking your head about all the on-again, off-again COVID-19 surges while Tennessee government officials wave away warnings? Join the club.
On Valentine’s Day, the Hamilton County Health Department reported 87 new cases, bringing the county’s total count of people sickened here since the pandemic began to 96,329 – and 1,030 deaths. Just a couple of weeks earlier, county health officials said our weekly average for new cases was at its highest point ever
Meanwhile, testing sites are closing down and the state has stopped reporting numbers except for once a week. Sometimes apparently not even that often: On Tuesday, the Tennessee Department of Heath website was still listing Hamilton County’s Feb. 5 data (94,633 cases and 1,012 deaths.
We’re guessing the idea is that if the state, through its slow-mo action, seems to pretend COVID is not still out there, we’ll all think that, too.
Apparently state officials are not wrong to think we can be fooled.
“Chattanooga-area COVID-19 testing options shrinking even as positive rates remain high,” states a headline in our paper Tuesday.
“Demand for testing has gone down sharply, but the number of positives isn’t correlating. We’re running fewer samples, but the positivity is still relatively high,” said Elizabeth Forrester, co-founder and technical director of Athena Esoterix, a local testing lab and the only one in the region capable of conducting the genetic sequencing that tells us what variants we’re dealing with.
Her lab has closed its walk-up community testing site on Signal Mountain Road, opened in early January to accommodate the region’s then-high demand for testing. The lab will still offer home test kits.
Clinica Medicos, which provided community COVID-19 testing throughout much of the pandemic, has shifted away from testing and vaccinating the public to aiding its established patients only.
And the Hamilton County Health Department closed its drive-thru community COVID-19 vaccination site at the Tennessee Riverpark last week, moving those services to its East Third Street location starting Tuesday.
So, yes – it seems the state’s out-of-date numbers are warping our view of virus danger.
And not by accident; bear with us while we backtrack a bit.
On Jan. 20, the Nashville Tennessean reported that every one of the state’s 95 counties, based on their soaring new cases of COVID infections, would be eligible to enact some form of mask mandate – even under the state’s October-passed mandate against mandates – if only Gov. Bill Lee would let them. By let them, we mean if Lee would declare a new state of emergency, which the new law allowed as an escape hatch should numbers climb dramatically above previous highs.
Well, the numbers did climb. And dramatically. All of Tennessee exceeded the absurdly high mask mandate threshold as of Jan. 15.
“Sixty-nine counties more than doubled the threshold. Nineteen counties more than tripled it. Five counties in West Tennessee quadrupled it,” the Tennessean reported.
That same week, the state health commissioner told lawmakers the omicron wave of the virus was “starting to plateau.” It didn’t. The numbers still climbed.
That same month, state health officials announced they would scale back reporting.
And Lee has repeatedly said there was and is no need to declare an emergency.
Now fast-forward to Tuesday. The state’s COVID website listed the Jan. 30 to Feb 5 new infection numbers averaged 10,264 new cases a day. Even then, more than 10 days ago, we were stampeding toward the new milestone of 2 million Tennesseans sickened with COVID-19 since the pandemic began. That’s creeping up on a third of the state’s entire population.
No wonder state politicians and health officials stopped posting timely COVID data.
Yes, we’re all tired of COVID-19. But clearly it is nowhere near tired of us, and we must not let derelict state leaders hoodwink us.
It’s time to scream at our state officials: The only thing we’re more tired of than COVID is their foolish no-count, no-accountability policies toward it.