Pandemic Update - July

Ugh. I'm not excited for this post. My heart aches. It is hard to describe things in a monthly post, but I'll give it a try. There has been so much argument about how to best address the pandemic. From the start however, it has truly been about people taking personal responsibility to do the right thing. In many states that were not hit as hard during the early part of the pandemic, people chose not to do things to help control the coronavirus. In particular, people fought against wearing masks. In fact many people argued that wearing masks should be a voluntary thing, not a mandatory thing set by the government. This would work if people were kind and took that responsibility. However, unfortunately many people simply fought against government regulation because  they were not willing to wear a mask voluntarily, for various reasons.

The situation with the pandemic is quickly worsening in many places across the country and we are at risk of losing control of the situation. In Utah, we have steadily been worsening and while we can still hope to improve things, we certainly need to change the direction things are going.

Here are the numbers.

First for Utah. Case counts have continued to rise and we now have a rolling 7 day average of new cases of almost 700. The number of individuals hospitalized in early June was about 160 and now we are at about 210. We are definitely still in a manageable situation. However, doctors in Utah are warning that if we continue down this path, the hospital system will become overwhelmed.

Here are some national numbers, 3.2 million cases in the US.

More of note is that some areas in particular are seeing dramatic increase in cases. On July 11 these were the case counts with Florida, Texas, California, Georgia and Arizona all with significant new cases as they have seen steady increases.

Today Florida crushed the previous record for cases and increased to over 15,000 new cases today.

Shantel and I have continued to try and be diligent in practicing social distancing and wearing a mask when that is not possible. However, we have also allowed our kids to play with friends and had a few friends visit from out of town. Based on the increase in cases we were discussing this weekend that we may need pull back again to make sure we are helping slow the growth of cases here in Utah.

If cases cannot be slowed- there will be so many more lives lost. In addition, the economic impact of closing businesses again would be devastating. I think for me I have to try and think about what Heavenly Father wants me to learn through this trial, and am I learning the lesson he would have me learn.

In our home here is a few notes from the last month:

Love this picture that Lydia made. Heavenly Father has a plan for us and we need to trust in him.

Visiting my parents and this picture shows so well what it means right now with social distancing from them to make sure we keep them safe.

We voted via mail (which we always do anyway), but across the state all mailing was done by mail in/drop off ballots.

We did go on a hike as a family and it was pretty nice. Here is Lucy. We found a couple nice spots to play that were not crowded. Unfortunately, other parts of the trail were a little crowded, so Shantel and I had to put on our masks for the 2nd half of the hike where we could not maintain distance. (We were the only people wearings masks, although we did see a family wearing masks that was starting as we were leaving).

No changes at work this month either. Shantel and I have honestly had a lot of stressful discussions on racial equality and coronavirus the last month. It seems like each night we end up talking about one of those and end the day on a bit of a stressful note.

Okay- that was not the most uplifting post ever. Right when COVID started there were a bunch of funny and creative memes, but not as much since then. However, someone the other day posted a bunch of good ones and I thought this might be a nice time to post them. It is good to be able to laugh. Here are a few favorites.

My conspiracy theory is that time travel IS real & someone keeps trying to fix 2020 by changing something, but every time they do, they unwittingly make it worse. How else do you explain the sudden disappearance of murder hornets? They saved us from those, but at what cost?!?!

"Sure we've had 1st quarantine....but what about 2nd quarantine?"

I think the biggest mistake we made is telling Americans that wearing masks is to protect other people. Know your audience!