Record Numbers

So New Mexico today posted another record number of Covid cases.  Most days we post a new record number.

Our lowest numbers were in early September.  Since then, daily reported cases have risen by a factor of 45.  That’s 45 TIMES THE NUMBER WE HAD JUST TWO MONTHS AGO.

The hospitals are at full capacity.  Any more cases, we just toss ’em in tents or something.  There’s some talk of opening up a recently-closed hospital.  There’s enough equipment there, but we’ve run out of medical personnel.  There’s talk of using National Guard doctors, but since National Guard doctors are civilian doctors outside their Guard duty, that means shifting them from one medical job to another, with a possible net effect of zero.

After her vigorous response to the pandemic earlier in the year, our governor’s current inertia is astounding.  Her stance seems to be something along the lines of, “If you keep disregarding my guidelines, I’ll just have to issue more guidelines.”

I had thought that maybe she was holding off until after the election, for fear the Republicans would call her a Mask Nazi or something.  But no.

Not that the rest of the country is doing much better, since the USA is now generating 160,000 cases per day.  (How’s that herd immunity workin’ for ya?)

If Trump hadn’t been such a coward, the pandemic could have been largely contained by May.  But he was terrified of giving bad news, and he didn’t want the stock market to go down for fear of losing the election, so he lied, and 260,000 died.  He left the bad news to the governors, but some governors refused to give the bad news, and the rest were inconsistent in their policies.  If Trump had told everyone to isolate and mask back in February, he’d be a hero now.

As it is, some states have given up contact and trace, because the virus is simply everywhere, and there are too many places any given victim might have found it.

2020.  The year that keeps on giving.

UPDATE: The governor finally moved, and the state is basically ordered to shut down for two weeks except for essential businesses.  Fingers crossed.