Remember in a recent post I bragged about how well New Mexico was doing with covid? For weeks we had about 100 new cases a day. That was 100 too many, but it wasn’t an alarming amount compared to our neighboring states of Arizona and Texas, which were way out of control. But suddenly, last week, our numbers started rising. Instead of around 100 new cases each day, it was 200 and then 300 and then 400, and every day was worse and worse. Wednesday was 577 new cases and yesterday was 672! I have no idea what’s going on.
I don’t know what happened to make the cases start rising like that. It doesn’t seem like it could have been the weather. In early and mid October it was still hot in Albuquerque. (That was before the sudden rapid drop in temperature resulting in snow late in the month). Did New Mexicans get tired of wearing their masks? For months, New Mexico was probably the most masked state in the US. Even stricter than California, New Mexicans have been wearing their masks outdoors and well as indoors, including while exercising. For months. So what happened?
Along with a lot of the rest of the country, it has gotten so much worse since I wrote that post a month ago. Daily new cases rose and rose. It was 1,000, then it was 1,500…every new milestone was shocking. Yesterday new cases in New Mexico exceeded 2,000. That might not sound like much to those of you in populous states, but the entire population of New Mexico is only about 2 million people. That’s smaller than a lot of cities.
Since we’re in Arizona now, here’s the Arizona statistics – approximately 4,000 new cases yesterday, out of a population of over 7 million. So Arizona is actually doing better than New Mexico by percent of population.
I’m also having trouble believing the rate increases are due to the winter season. That’s a plausible theory in the north, but Albuquerque temperatures were in the 80’s and 90’s when rates started climbing there early last month. And it’s still hot in Tucson. It was 91 degrees today. That’s not winter weather.
There’s so much unknown. In addition to the rapidly rising numbers, it’s very concerning what we’re hearing about long term effects. People are exhausted and foggy-brained and have other vague but debilitating symptoms months later. It’s just hard not to worry.
Update: in New Mexico, over 2,000 new cases the day before yesterday, nearly 3,000 yesterday. A couple of months ago it was just 100 a day. What is going on?
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