We made a calculated decision.
On the evening of March 14, we allowed Austin to go to a friend’s house for a birthday party with 4 other classmates. We knew this was going to be the last time that he would see them face-to-face for a long while. We justified this decision by acknowledging that this same close knit group of 5 kids had already been with each other all week; one extra day probably wasn’t going to make a difference. By that time, either they had COVID or they didn’t.
When I picked up Austin, the father approached me and grabbed my hand when I walked in (a hand that I had purposefully left at my side) and put his arm around me and placed it on the opposite shoulder, not hesitating to share with me his disappointment that local school administrators had elected to close the schools. As we were leaving the home, he encouraged Austin to come over to their home to visit and watch Stranger Things “during break”. Once in the car, Austin shared that the father had told the kids that the virus was made by the Chinese as a biological weapon and that it had accidentally been unleashed on the world by mistake.
The remainder of the short drive home was spent telling Austin that he would – under no uncertain terms – NOT being going to visit friends. Even if they were all getting together, he would not. He was also introduced to the notions of motivated reasoning, political biases, and conspiratorial thinking.
Fast forward 2 weeks: there were 196 total cases of COVID-19 in Central NY. As of yesterday, 7 days later, there are 486. Not good.
Not terrible, either. Our curve locally is flattened considerably compared to downstate. To reiterate thoughts from last week (but now with scarier and more accurate data), 7 days after NYC had their 124th case, they had confirmed 2,888 cases. CNY has increased from 196 to 486 over the same course of time. That isn’t to say that the curve is necessarily flattened due to our behaviors and social distancing, it could just be reduced density and a variety of other factors considered last week.
But let’s be honest, the number of positive cases is meaningless. We should all be able to acknowledge that testing has been an issue and we don’t really know the number of people who have the disease. That is why I prefer to look at the hospitalization figures instead. Counting only residents of Onondaga County, last week there were 19 hospitalizations, and 33 additional patients have been hospitalized since. That might sound like a big spike (especially if we are ignoring the data from surrounding counties), but it really isn’t. In NYC, there were 21 total hospitalizations on March 8 … that figure increased to 640 in one week, the same length of time. Last week, the NYC hospitals reported doubling the number of daily hospitalizations every 4.7 days after initially doubling every 3.4 days early on. Onondaga hasn’t yet doubled in a week.
This is where things get interesting. Governor Cuomo closed the state to all “non-essential” work on March 20. It is now April 5 and 2 full weeks have passed since his executive order. The virus spreads through close contact and (by most accounts) symptoms appear in 3-5 days (although we still aren’t sure exactly how much of the transmission is airborne or from asymptomatic carriers). There are multiple reports of patients whose symptoms worsen in the latter half of the 2nd week or beginning of the third week after exposure – that is when we would expect them to seek hospital-level care. Bearing that in mind, if everyone did what they were supposed to from the beginning, the end of that third week will be one week from today.
On the other hand, even if everyone stayed home, families/households would still be transmitting among themselves, but that should be limited. If every carrier gets 2 others sick after executive order, that would likely result in an additional week of spread within the homes of those with the virus, putting CNY’s COVID peak somewhere between 1-2 weeks from now. The hospitals are ready and waiting.
I asked Austin last night: “After schools were closed, for how much longer did your friends and their families still hang out socially?”
“They finally stopped last weekend.“
(Fuck.)