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 definition a case (3) Those who don’t aren’t cases. In perspective then, we can expect to have more cases diagnosed. But being a case isn’t a death sentence, nor even means you’ll be sick.
Last week, I faced elective surgery. I was COVID-19 tested twice. Apparently I’m not a case, but I got bled and two days prior to surgery nose-swabbed anyway. My surgery had a 2 percent fatality factor that is a very real statistic, and I knew it. COVID-19 has a 2-3 percent fatality for those hospitalized with serious symptoms.
Now comes my interesting reported statistic. Since I apparently survived, at least so far, the doctors have put me in the win column! And not once did anyone but me bother to look up or discuss with me my chances of dying. After all it was elective.
But the popular news narrative on COVID-19 “is doom is upon us!” We need to get inside our homes, like the Passover Jews, and wear our masks on our faces because the COVID-19 Angel of Death is among us. We’d all be wearing sterile suits like in “Dr. No” if they could make enough.
(4) All of the folks who walk out of testing facilities, doctors’ offices or hospitals diagnosed as cases with
COVID-19 in their blood, 97 to 98 percent are not going to get sick nor die!
Check these numbers from the CDC for the flu. Of 35,520,883 people with symptomatic illness, 34,157 died.
(5) The raw truth is that like the flu virus, a relative few of us are going to die from COVID-19, or even the surgery I had. But we know it’s going to happen, so we don’t, didn’t and won’t expect that our personal number has come up.
The curve has flattened. But the same statistics apply, they never changed. We need to open up our economy, get out and revitalize our economy and our Nation. Open our churches, open our schools, open our government, open our businesses and show the world that Virginia again leads the Nation.
Bill Husztek
Gloucester, Va.