— Submitted by a reader for everyone you know and don’t know —

We don’t want to contribute to corona-fatigue so if you are already aware that you should act as though you are contagious, feel free to skip the rest of the message.

This is important to understand – from a public health perspective the US does not have the resources and people to handle this as a Containment effort (where they find every person in close contact with confirmed cases and test them, then isolate confirmed cases). We are in the stage of Mitigation, where it has already spread throughout the community and containment efforts are ineffective. It is now assumed that most people will be exposed.

So… patients with symptoms that are not severe are being told that if they self-quarantine for 14 days then they don’t need the test. (again to preserve supplies for more severe cases). 

We may all be one-degree away from a confirmed COVID case. And we will not know if we may have been in close contact with a confirmed case because h/she is not getting tested.

So assume you have been exposed. You do not know if you have been exposed to a positive case because even extremely high-risk cases are not being tested and confirmed, let alone having contact-tracing done.

This means taking precautions to not spread the virus to others. Assume you are contagious. Assume everyone you interact with is contagious also.

**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**