Local COVID-19 updates

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data - and Massachusetts breaks 20k confirmed deaths )

Compared to last week, we had fewer newly reported cases (which is good), but more newly reported deaths. Today's 47 deaths push the statewide count of confirmed COVID-19 deaths over twenty thousand, to 20,025. Meanwhile, the hospitalization counts are up compared to last week, which bodes ill for the immediate future. Plus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have their new "community level" ratings available, and those rising hospitalization rates pushed most of Massachusetts into the "medium" community level category.

The front page of today's Boston Globe featured a story about how the CDC is planning an "ambitious" overhaul to address its missteps during COVID:
( (this article is on STAT News and thus should be free of paywalls) )

Well, I certainly hope they'll get their act more nearly together, especially on their communications with the general public.

The town of Acton's current Google Data Studio dashboard is showing 16 active and 3,855 cumulative cases as of August 17; over the last week, the current cases count has ranged from 25 on August 12 to the 16 on August 17. In the most recent "newsflash style update" at 7PM on December 21, 2021, the town reported 1538 cumulative cases with 89 individuals in isolation, 1417 recovered and 32 fatalities.

My church's upcoming COVID protocols

My church sent out an email today regarding what the COVID protocols will be when the new church year starts in September:
( the deets )

I'm ... not really happy about this. The state is still running well over a thousand new confirmed cases per day; add in the probable cases, and the state's 7-day case rate is currently 131.58 per 100k population per week. In other words, pick eight hundred people at random in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the odds are at least one of them got COVID in the past week. Granted, the church isn't so big that we can pack that many people into a service. However, with case rates this high, we are absolutely going to have folks catch COVID, and some of them aren't going to realize it; Unless we've found some way to make parts of the Sanctuary magically COVID-proof, running maskless anywhere in the service is just begging for community spread.

I'm even less happy about non-worship activities being "mask optional." Granted, I fully expect that the folks at my church will respect individual participant's requests - but I fear that those mask requests will be seen by some as impositions, and that there will be subtle pressure to ditch the masks "because, of course, none of us are sick". (Possibly not-so-subtle pressure, depending.)

I also haven't heard yet what the plan is going to be for the choir. Especially as, last year, the basses and tenors were singing right behind the pulpit. The same pulpit that will be mask-optional for those speaking therefrom.

Yikes.