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Letter: The good news about COVID can be missed

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Your July 23 headline story by Sherry Hamilton, basically a good job of reporting, missed the good news in favor of ill-defined bad news. It opens with “COVID-19 cases continue to climb in Gloucester—going from 79 to 112 confirmed cases, a 41 percent increase following last week’s 50 percent jump from 53 cases.” It made a great headliner.

Imagine how your readers would have felt if instead you’d opened with, deaths in Gloucester and Mathews were unchanged. The good news—nobody else died!

You quoted Dr. Richard Williams’s observation that the increase reflects “enhanced community transmissions.” It was an interesting observation, but not much more; because the good news was the vast majority of cases are walking out of treatment facilities with no further problem.

What we do know factually is (1) Total testing in Virginia for COVID-19 went up 17 percent to over 950,000 cases this week (2) That anyone who has COVID-19 antibodies is by medical definit...

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