Crush COVID-19, task force urges

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If you can pick one thing to change for the next week, go one week without entering anyone’s home that is not your own. That request is part of an urgent appeal from Dr. Amy Slagle, Menominee Tribal Clinic COVID-19 response team incident commander.

Menominee County recently had one of the highest burden rates of COVID-19 in the state, she said.

Burden, also defined as case rate, is the total number of cases a county or region has per 100,000 Wisconsin residents in the past two weeks.

As of Oct. 19, Menominee County had 248 cases with no deaths. Shawano County reported 2,057 cases with 15 deaths, according to the Menominee-Shawano Counties Department of Health.

The tribal clinic task force has released an urgent message asking Menominee County residents to help stop the spread of the disease, saying the community must crush the COVID-19 surge.

In the statement to tribal members, Slagle noted:

“We are at a critical point. A vaccine is months away. Wisconsin had an all-time high number of deaths yesterday. Hospitals have nowhere to put people,” she said.

That means:

• There is very serious community spread of disease.

• Assume everyone you meet has COVID-19. That is the way people must all behave and make choices.

• Two-month-old babies are infected.

• Elders are ill in the hospital.

• People are getting COVID-19 from sharing a ride without a mask, being in the same room with a positive person, eating near each other outside, working in the same room or going to visit a family member without masks.

• If you have to be admitted to the hospital, with COVID-19 or another ailment, you will likely get shipped to a hospital far away. When people hear “no hospital capacity,” they turn off their brains and stop thinking about it. What it means is, there are no beds.

Slagle went on to outline the pathway of COVID-19, which is no infections to a few infections, followed by more infections, then many infections, to people sick enough to require hospitalizations to people dying from the disease. She said there are many sick people now and many people in the hospital. The next step in the progression is a fatal one, she said. “Please,” Slagle said, “we don’t want to lose a single person in this community.”

She recommends taking the following action steps now:

• Do not ride in a car with anyone else without masks.

• Please do not visit your elders for the next week. Do not go there.

• Elders, do not let other family members in your home for the next week. You should assume they have COVID-19.

• Do not go in any store unless everyone is wearing a mask inside.

• Do not go in a bar or restaurant. Pick up curbside from the curb.

• Wear a mask everywhere you go.

• Stay away at least six feet from others.

• Wash hands, wash hands, wash hands.

• If you can pick one thing to change for the next week, go one week without entering anyone’s home that is not your own.

Finally, Slagle urges everyone in the community to asses their actions, choices and beliefs. “Change whatever you can to be safer to avoid infection — to keep the elders and other vulnerable people alive,” she said. “Please spread the word and decide what changes you can make today.”