The following is commentary intended for discussion. Add your comments.
What many scientists feared at the beginning of the Covid-19 “stay-at-home” orders proved true. And President Trump proved correct on this point– though few appeared to wish to credit him.
Isolating at home was a major mistake and likely led to a greater explosion in Covid-19 cases.
An early hint came from N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo where the first big Covid-19 spike hit. He announced during one of his daily news conferences that the vast majority of those hospitalized with Covid-19 were people who had isolated at home. Also hard hit were those in group homes. Not on the list: the homeless who had been living outside.
“Early look at data from 100 New York hospitals shows that 66% of new admissions related to the virus are people who were at home, Cuomo said... 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home. The next highest source of admissions was from nursing homes, 18%.
If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on those hospitalized with Covid-19, May 2020
“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he added. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”
Cuomo said nearly 84% of the hospitalized cases were people who were not commuting to work through car services, personal cars, public transit or walking. He said a majority of those people were either retired or unemployed. Overall, some 73% of the admissions were people over age 51.
He added that the information showed the hospitalized were predominantly not working or traveling, and not essential employees.
“We’ll have to find out why that is,” declared Cuomo. Yet little more was said about it. No public national investigation was launched. Many public health officials and government officials continued to press for strict isolation.
Months later, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) acknowledged that it’s nearly impossible to transmit Covid-19 outdoors.
It turns out all those ridiculous arrests or criticism of people such as: a lone surfer riding the waves at the beach, the mom sitting apart from others in an outdoor arena to watch her child play sports; the parents who brought their kids to a playground for exercise were not only contrary to common sense, but also the ultimate proven science.
Those people were doing exactly what more of us should have been doing, according to scientific data.
The parks and beaches shouldn’t have been shut down; they should have been opened and people encouraged to get outside and visit them.
What do you think?
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