COVID and SW VA

[nm9stheham]

Yes, I hope your mom does OK with this, Althea.

I can see both sides of this. I am 67 and my wife is older and I am concerned for her more than me. But, we have the option much of the time to not interact, and can cut back our chances for exposure.

Not everyone has that option, and the world has to go on and people have to work. If you work in a hospital or food processing plant or a bunch of other trades and professions, it is not an option to stop. (Example: If my and my son want to keep our contracting business going, we have to do the work... there is no option. We just have to be as careful as we can.) So many folks are just looking at the odds and going forward. Especially if you are younger than 50, it is not a big risk to you personally.

Everyone should start thinking about the actual impact of a vaccine in this situation; it is not necessarily a silver bullet. A vaccine better than 60% effective will be a blessing, but no one should expect much more than 60-70% effective, and it could be less. And some people simply will not take a vaccine; it would not surprise me that 25-30% of the population did not take it. (That's my pet peeve!) So now we have maybe 40-50% of the population getting effective immunity for some unknown period of time from the vaccine. With the already naturally immunized folks who got sick and survived and some unknown numbers who have some prior immunity, then hopefully the outbreaks will be small and confined.

But, like measles, this may stick around around to some extent, regardless of what we do, like the other corona viruses, cold viruses, and other flu viruses that already exist. This will all fall into the category of part of life, and we'll maybe adjust our cleanliness measures permanently. Being a Public Health official in the USA nowadays takes the patience of Job!

[Serious Conversation]

I wouldn’t be surprised at all in Northam doesn’t throw more restrictions on SWVA. It’s doing poorly relative to the rest of the state.

[Beretta]

Another poster mentioned that Wal Mart in SWVA also had to close for two days due to a COVID outbreak. They are due to open back up today:

https://www.city-data.com/forum/virg...t-closure.html

[DubbleT]

yes, everyone on BOTH sides of Bristol will be happy to be able to get back to their regular shopping

[thatdurncat13]

Wytheville here, I just had two semi's with U.S. Government tags turn by me headed towards the hospital.