Thursday, July 23, 2020

COVID-19: A Tale of Two Counties


This post deal with the facts about COVID-19 in Dallas County and Collin County, which is just north of Dallas County.

As of 7/22/2020, Collin County has about 1 million people and 72 have died of COVID-19 related illnesses. All of these deaths have been to the elderly or those with severe underlying health conditions, and typically both. Except for one person who was 48 and had no underlying health conditions.

My source for this is from Collin County:
https://www.collincountytx.gov/public_information/news/Pages/default.aspx 

This means that out of 1 million people, only one died who was presumably healthy and not elderly.

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Now let's take a look at Dallas County.
The Dallas County population 2.6 million

and the number of deaths was 567 as of 7/22/2020.

To fairly compare the counties, I'll report them as per 1 million people. So there were 218 deaths per million people in Dallas County. This is 3 times the rate of deaths in Collin County. What causes this discrepancy?

In Dallas County, the zip code hit hardest is 75211. According to the Dallas Morning News, 80% of its residents are Latino and 60% of those infected are Latino. The problems there are language barriers, overcrowding, not following the social distancing rules, and having a high number of illegal immigrants who are afraid or delay going to a doctor or hospital.

Currently, medical workers are increasing the testing of those in this zip code, and then beginning treatment immediately after a person tests positive.

Because of these sorts of discrepancies, 
the experts are indeed divided about the way to handle this, especially on the question of this mass shutdown.

Everything about this is confusing as experts with excellent qualifications are all over the spectrum on this issue. Even for the vaccine one hears promising results but then other experts also say that a virus vaccine of this type has not been developed and cannot be .. as the virus mutates by the time the vaccine is developed.

We do not have the answers yet about the best way to handle COVID-19.

Here’s what we do know. I live in Collin County.

Are my family and I afraid to go out? Heck no. We go out to eat and go to the movies. Yes, we obey the rules about facemasks and social distancing.

People forget that much poverty is created by businesses that are closed. This poverty itself leads to deaths.

The best thing to do is to allow businesses and schools to open so that the poor and middle class can stop hemorrhaging money. It is terrible what is happening to them.

And then we can focus our resources on protecting the elderly, as well as Latinos (and others) in poor areas.

Yes, we should wear a mask when out in public and practice social distancing. And get tested.

But let's open up schools and businesses so that a sense of normalcy is established.

How To Reopen Closed Schools Amid Coronavirus : NPR




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