(05-13-2020 08:03 PM)Bronco14 Wrote: Are the hospitals overwhelmed there?
No they are not. And about 1/3rd or so of the Auburn cases are actually from Chambers and some from Russell counties which are more rural and have little in the way of reliable health care. They go to East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika (almost indistinguishable from Auburn) and they get counted as Lee County cases. The Hospital here set up a couple of weeks in advance to be able to dedicate a floor and part of the ICU to what they were expecting and set up a triage to distinguish between normal emergency cases (heart, stroke, gallbladder etc) and COVID 19. Many of the Lee County cases were attributed to a local student who graduated at the end of Spring Semester and went skiing in Colorado, contracted the disease and returned and ate at a popular restaurant, and to about 3 churches which spread the virus very efficiently through singing, touching hymn books, and touching pew surfaces. It is believed that the nursing home outbreak was traceable to a person exposed at Church.
I'm all about freedom of religion but the setting was and is perfect for transmission. And when Sunday attendees eat out, or visit nursing homes as they frequently do in the South on Sunday afternoons you get the broadcast pattern for the disease.
Having one postal handler in Montgomery who worked sorting mail probably didn't help anyone in this region either because about half the state' mail goes through that facility, and that postal worker died, or so I was told so that needs verification, but it was reported that one had it.
Everyone in our neighborhood gets out of the house and walks but observes distancing and most wear masks. What everyone does do is Lysol their mail.
So after reading through this thread I find the usual overreactions to what for most people in Lee Country is an annoyance and because the public is ignorant of what actually happens here and why it looks on paper worse than it is.
I doubt we have man students die from COVID19. The problem with the students is that they carry it and pass it on, especially at open businesses where they are the last ones to take precautions. Without the students Auburn might have 30,000 people. With them it is almost doubled, especially when the service people many of which live beyond Lee County drive in for work.
With the students away the pace of quarantine has been relatively easy. Sam's is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays an hour earlier for seniors and they enforce social distancing. Walmart is open early on Tuesdays for the same but enforcement of social distancing is hit or miss depending upon the workers. Sams has been well stocked Walmart less so on the key items. There's plenty of paper towels and toilet paper, plenty of meat and the prices aren't gouged. What nobody has is a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some beans are getting scarce and finding your favorite pasta sauce is hit our miss and fire roasted diced tomatoes are wiped out, go figure.
So we really aren't that bad off. And a kudos to AT&T. We've had some kind of free premier movie channel since the Quarantine began.