It gets harder and harder these days to find many people in the Chattanooga area wearing a mask to guard against catching or giving COVID-19.
Yet the illness is still with us.
Hamilton County Health Department, since March 1, has posted 217 new cases and 4 new deaths. That’s a welcome drop from the 1,000 or so new cases a day just one month previous, but it’s important to remember we’ve been this low before. At least three times before. In fact, just last November we thought we were almost done with COVID. Then came the delta variant. And then another – omicron.
Altogether since the pandemic began, we’ve seen 99,176 cases of COVID in Hamilton County, and 1,082 deaths. Some 2,600 of us had to be hospitalized with the virus.
Unfortunately our Tennessee elected officials are choosing not to notice COVID anymore. Tennessee’s statewide COVID dashboard hasn’t been updated since Jan. 2. It still lists 1.45 million cases and 20,902 fatalities. Under the heading “Statewide New Cases in Last 14 days,” are the words “No data.” The state does seem to be updating county-by-county numbers, albeit in the case of Hamilton County, the listing on Thursday was five days old.
Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center, which has been a mainstay of COVID data from the beginning, puts Tennessee numbers at more than 2 million confirmed cases and 24,732 deaths. JHU puts Tennessee’s positivity rate at 13.33%, well above the optimal level of 5% or less.
Our state lawmakers aren’t just turning a blind eye to all this, they are aiding and abetting the virus, having last fall passed mandates against mandates for either masking or vaccinating, and announcing in January that they would largely stop counting cases.
They’ve clearly done just that.
It’s little wonder that masks are few and far between – even through the virus is not gone and now has killed – killed – more than 6 million people worldwide – almost 1 million of them in the U.S.
Thankfully, city and county and local business leaders have been more attentive to common-sense preventions.
Hamilton County had a mask mandate early in the pandemic, and might have had one again had it not been for the state officials’ stupidity in passing the no mandates bill.
But local officials and businesses found some creative work-arounds.
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly and the city partnered with the county, the local health department and the Chattanooga Chamber Foundation in August to launch a Vax 4 Cash sweepstakes to incentivize people to become fully vaccinated.
Funded as a pilot program using $23,000 in federal pandemic aid, the effort’s data and survey responses indicate about 3,340 Hamilton County residents got their jabs for a chance to win $1,000 and a month of free city parking, along with other prizes ranging from spa treatments to a pair of roundtrip airline tickets.
At the same time, many proactive employers continued to insist on masks inside their businesses.
Not everyone has been happy with that, and some have continued to insist on not masking.
A maskless Cleveland, Tennessee, woman in February refused to leave a Cleveland medical business that required patients to wear masks.
When she wouldn’t mask up and wouldn’t leave, she was charged with criminal trespassing. She still continues to fight. In a hearing Thursday in Bradley County General Sessions Court, she said she would not plead guilty. She said she is representing herself and wants a jury trial in the misdemeanor case punishable upon conviction by up to 30 days in jail or a $50 fine.
Stay tuned.
She’s clear evidence that more is needed to help people understand masks and vaccines are common-sense precautions – not rights infringements.
Hamilton County’s rate of new COVID-19 vaccine takers has slowed to its lowest level to date, with only 279 residents receiving their first vaccine dose during the first week of March. Perhaps more incentives are needed.
We would love to believe the virus is beaten.
But it isn’t. It’s just that we seem to have decided, with just under 55% of us vaccinated, to pretend it is over and gone.
Hope springs eternal, but it also needs our help.