Carol Edmund: What can we do to help?

I don't know if you realize the U.S. had more than 4 million new positive coronavirus cases in November.

We're adding 1 million or more positive cases a week (that we know about). We're also in the

realm of adding over 200,000 new coronavirus cases each day. There are more cases than we know about.

So without any increases, and if we continue at this rate until June, we will have had more than 43 million positive cases reported ... those numbers astound me – not as numbers, but as people. Wow, that's a lot of us being effected by the disease itself. Thankfully most of us will have mild cases, but not all of us. Our health care systems are overrun already or on their way to being overrun.

What does that mean? I think it means that if you're having a heart attack it might not be as easy to get the care you need. If you've just been in an accident and are injured, the same thing might apply. Even if you need more than home care because of the virus, it may become more and more difficult to get that care. And if you're a doctor or a nurse or a lab technician or any of the others in our healthcare system and have been run off your feet? How do you get some relief to continue working with no end in sight?

All those who are providing care, those providing first response, those providing food, those making sure our water and power is humming along. There are a lot of people who make our lives easier who we rely on. How are they doing?

I don't know the answers for sure. However, I wondered if there was anything we could all do to protect our health care professionals, protect our health care systems as well as protect those who make our lives easier and our economies.

By June we may have a subset of the population vaccinated and protected from the virus – that

will help.

By June many of these people will be recovered and replaced by others with the virus. A percentage will be dead.

What can we do to help keep the new cases down? Keeping positive cases down will help us also keep the fatalities down.

Same old story, I'm afraid: masks, distancing, washing hands, no group face to face meetings or parties, distancing and hand washing, quarantining if sick, getting tested if you have symptoms (and changing plans if you are positive), tracing others you may have infected.

Simple acts can make a big impact on the US but also here in town. Can't we do that until it's no longer necessary?

Carol Edmund lives in Carson City.