When I wrote in May I sat in a room with people from the Historical Society I belong to and no one in that room knew anyone directly that had the virus. Today that is different. Not only does one of the people from the Historical Society spouse have it and has been hospitalized and returned home. I now know three people in the same family that have it and one friend has had a relative that died. One of the people I know has recovered except can't smell or taste and the another only recently tested positive and has a cough. As you can see there are different severity of this disease. There are different symptoms and much different recovery times. Yes this is now much closer than at the beginning where I couldn't name a name or even a person that knew a person. So as time changes my situation has changed my actions.
Back at the end of June it became mandatory if you are in a public place you need to wear a mask or some sort of face covering. Still this doesn't seem to be full proof because one person gets the virus and brings it home. Then you get a house of people with the virus but if they don't know they have it now they are sharing it. I now have multiple masks and wear one when I am inside a public place. I am still lax around family which probably isn't the smartest thing. If you go to a restaurant you have to wear the mask until you are seated at a table then you can remove it. When you are ready to get up from the table you must put your mask back on to leave the table. A few months ago I wouldn't have done this but I wouldn't eat inside either. It is now too hot to always choose to eat outside if we want to go out and yes we still want to venture out I am going to wear a mask when in close proximity to others.
Now that we are almost to August the question of when kids should go back to school and how should they attend school is a hot button. My feel is if the people making this decision aren't meeting in person then how can they expect to send teachers and students back to the classroom together. Kids will be kids and yes after a period of time some are going to learn to understand you can't take a drink out of Sally's juice box and you can't share a piece of chewing gum with your boyfriend but that is going to take time. Probably more than the two extra weeks that they are talking about delaying the start of school. Counties have given parents choices on how they want their kids to attend school. Do they want them back in a classroom or to learn at home. Some kids are not going to do as well at home and others are going to be fearful for going back to school. I don't know which way I would lean. I feel that the interaction with other kids is very important but how do you decide.
The State of Florida now has over 400,000 cases compared to at the beginning of May it was only 40,000 and Pinellas County over 14,600 and in May was 828. Here is the thing with the statistics other than the fact that we have found out over the last month that some testing facilities are only reporting their positive cases and some people that have gone to be tested and left before the test was completed but had filled out the paperwork were reported as positive cases. All of this information not only skews the statistics but it also makes a person wonder. If these are the things that we know what do we still not know? And as I think about the numbers over 1,200 people have been hospitalized for Covid-19 but how many were only there for a day or two and got better? Since in Pinellas County if only 367 people have died from it does it mean the other 14,300 have gotten better? How long is the recovery time for those that do get better? So, I just end up with more questions the more I look into the facts.
I don't know where all this is leading. I suppose in a few more weeks I will be writing again about more craziness. I wonder if during the Spanish Flu the people of that time did they know what it was and how to not get it or was it just all of a sudden people started getting really sick and dying? Just more questions. Be safe out there. The world is continuously changing and not much for the better.
