Our grim COVID-19 milestones

We talk about community and call fellow county residents Skagitonians, a unique name marking our territory, the place we call home. We think of ourselves as neighbors finding common cause in this place where we all live, even though from Anacortes to Marblemount our physical and social landscapes and experiences are quite diverse and even unique.

We, all Skagitonians, ought to be in pain over the suffering and death the coronavirus pandemic has brought to our neighbors. October began with grim milestones, with first the count of 100 people hospitalized in Skagit County hospitals in September, then the count of total COVID-19 cases passing 10,000 since tracking started in early 2020 and, tragically, 105 of our neighbors and family members have died. The death total had reached 100 Oct. 8. These numbers make the death rate 1%, another milestone no one wanted to reach.

There were 91 new cases in September 2020 and 151 new cases last October. Adding over 100 cases a day has been a weekly occurrence since this August. The delta variant is not our friend, but way too many people are inviting it into their lives, putting their families, neighbors and co-workers at risk.

It did not, and does not, have to be this way. We are blessed with a dedicated and much more than competent public health department. Skagit Public Health staff have initiated and innovated and reached out to fulfill their mission of serving the public from the start. They began aggressive contact tracing. In April 2020 they set up a free drive through testing site at Skagit Valley College. When high winds blew their tents down that summer and cold weather came in November they moved to the county fairgrounds. Once vaccines became available they added a vaccination clinic to their fairground menu.

They have reached out to the public with pop-up clinics at festivals and schools.

Then, when the delta variant of the coronavirus roared into the county, they mobilized again, reopening the fairgrounds for testing and vaccinations.

Our public health staff and our hospital healthcare workers are heroes, going above and beyond the call of duty to serve others, not thinking of themselves. Sadly, they are called on to save way too many who proclaim themselves patriots, insisting on their freedom to interpret the public health needs and what is safe for the community. This faction of Skagitonians threatens us all.

In the theatre, tragedies are defined by the deaths that pileup on the way to the climax. In Skagit County, we are nowhere near the end and now 105 people are dead.

This faction of individual truth-insisters rail against regulation and government control and make metropolitan King County a bogeymen of overreach into people’s lives. Well, diverse, large and complicated King County, not at all small and homogeneous, experienced 231 new coronavirus infections per 100,000 residents the last 14 days.

The freedom seeking portion of Skagit County is pushing up our county’s new case rate to over 488 per 100,000 the last two weeks. There are 211% more cases here per person than among King County residents. Nine people are getting infected in our county for every four King County residents catching the virus.

This small faction among us are loving their freedom literally to their deaths, a situation that ought to sadden as well as sicken us all.