Social distancing still matters

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

As we have spent a lot of time focusing on the errors of our elected leaders (lack of transparency, flawed mandates, misuse Covid dollars, etc.) we wanted to take a moment to remind people about personal responsibility.

A friend shared how her boss came down with Covid-19 a few weeks ago and still came into work and ended up getting the entire office of a dozen people infected. My friend was vaccinated but the symptoms were bad enough to keep her off her feet for a week.  Just this week, a workplace outbreak of 40+ cases happened in a grocery store and also in a cabinet shop in Southern Oregon.

We came across another example where a co-worker got Covid and was unable to attend an important family event. In his absence he sent his wife to attend. It was only at the end of the family reception that she disclosed this scenario which made a few people who had prolonged close contact with her go home and take extra self-testing and quarantining measures.  That wife may not have had symptoms, but you can still have have Covid and spread it unaware.   If you are living with someone who actively has Covid, use that time to increase your social distancing.

In an another example, we witnessed people with Covid going back to work once they feel they are able and not using a safe period after symptoms disappear as recommended by many doctors.

All these examples we cited involve people who knowingly had Covid and still took risks. We understand that people with vaccinations/antibodies/low risk ages have less risk and better protections. Yet, when you are out among others (and you have Covid) you don’t know who the vulnerable and at-risk people are.

The Delta variant is estimated to be as twice as contagious, which is contributing to some of of our hospitals being over-crowded.   One Roseburg hospital had to treat nearly a quarter of all patients in their parking lot tent clinic because their was not enough room.  Yes, government taxes and rules made Oregon the least hospital capacity state in the nation BEFORE Covid and Brown’s vaccine mandates for health care workers is driving health care workers out of our hospitals even further. Until those problems will be solved, we still have a hospital capacity problem (this very moment) and those who knowingly have Covid should especially take added social distancing efforts and practice safe return-to-work time periods.

We know everyone feels overloaded, overwhelmed with contradicting advice, burned by broken trust by various authorities and endured rollbacks of our freedoms not shared by most other states, but that should not detract us from following some basic advice that would even apply to you if you had the common flu.