Keeping Up The Fear

 There seems to be a conscious effort by many in the media and in certain parts of the government to keep up the level of fear regarding COVID.  There also seems to be very little attention being paid to the major reduction in the virus in the USA.  Consider this:

1.  In Connecticut where I am at the moment, there have been a rather stead rate of new cases of about 110 each day during the last week.  That's 110 positive tests each day out of about 17,500 tests taken each day or about two thirds of one percent positive.  At that level, the results are in the area of just the false positives.  During the same week, the number of people hospitalized due to the virus has declined to 58 from 60 and there have been a total of 4 deaths from viral infections.  In short, the numbers in CT are truly great.  Sure, we would like to see no new cases, but we are at about as low a level as can be achieved absent a vaccine.

I report all this because yesterday evening, I got a recorded phone call and an email from the mayor of Stamford who reported -- somewhat hysterically -- that testing done on human waste retrieved at the area sewage treatment plant showed higher levels of the virus than expected.  The mayor said we all had to prepare for a flare up of the virus because of this reading.  He warned that he may have to shut down restaurants and other businesses again.

I've heard of reading tea leaves, but I've never heard of government reading fecal material.  Seriously, given the really low figures we have achieved, isn't it a bit premature to sound a major alarm and to threaten another total shutdown based only on this crap.

2.  Going inito the Labor Day weekend, the Dr. Fauci warned that there were seven states at risk for virus flares including Iowa, ND, SD and four others in that region.  None of the seven states has been hit hard by the virus.  A flare was predicted in SD when they hosted the big motorcycle rally attended by about a quarter of a million people about three weeks ago.  There was no flare that followed.  Fauci didn't get hysterical in his comments, he issued a warning.  That's fine.  But then there's the coverage of the warning.  The AP spoke of Iowa and said that had over 66,000 cases of the virus.  That sounds really bad.  Of course, what that really means is that since the start of the pandemic six plus months ago, there have been 66,000 positive tests in Iowa.  Many had no symptoms.  Most had mild symptoms.  Only a small number were hospitalized and even a smaller number died.  But remember, the bulk of these people have all fully recovered from the virus.  Based upon the actual tests and the dates upon which they were taken, the number of infected people in Iowa is less than 20 % of the figure used by the AP.