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The NUMBERS! And Fairness! D'oh!

I'll start with some good news: "...residents 70 and older can now register to receive the coronavirus vaccine through the state [of Indiana]'s website." The CDC and some academics wanted to vaccinate essential workers to "level the playing field," because "essential workers" include a higher proportion of non-white people than the over-70 crowd does. As readers surely know, the over-70 crowd is far more likely to die of COVID than anyone else. No, the link doesn't go to the Babylon Bee or The Onion: they really called for more deaths in the name of Fairness. 

And sorry, teachers, but you don't get to jump the line in front of doctors, nurses, essential medical staff and old people, either. 

Oldsters among the first to get COVID vaccines in Indiana. Photo from Pixabay.

At least the state of Indiana is more interested in saving lives than ideology. Would that the state had such an interest in science and data. Like most other places, we continually hear about "the numbers." Today, most of the state is in the "red zone" based on "the numbers." These are calculated by county. Indiana's dashboard presents data by county. And yet I don't see any data showing my county is getting worse: positive cases are on a downward trend (given the Christmas dip), daily deaths have been level for a month, the positive test rate for two months, and our district's hospital census peaked a month ago. Twenty-three percent of intensive care unit beds are available. Unless things took a sharp turn for the worse last night, I don't know what they're talking about. 

Our health department in Indianapolis blames "the numbers" on "holiday gatherings," even though the state's dashboard shows a dip in deaths at Christmas and no changes in trends after Thanksgiving. At least our government has been no worse, and probably better, than many other places. 

And at least there's no talk of lockdown. The dumpster fire in Michigan has shown Indiana what not to do. Thanks, Gov. Whitmer! Indy's mayor hasn't announced what, if anything, he plans to do about "the numbers." Since the numbers look like they're actually going down, hopefully nothing.

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