Good social distancing looks to be paying off

Staying cooped up at home isn’t a lot of fun. In fact, it is getting more depressing by the day. The number of coronavirus cases continue to increase by the day, across the state and in La Crosse. And we’re told the peak may not come for nearly two more weeks. But here’s a little good news, and we can all use some of that these days. It looks like our social distancing efforts are paying off. The La Crosse County Health Director credited the Governor’s  safer-at-home order for a relatively low number of cases locally. They say the numbers would likely be much higher if we weren’t practicing good social distancing. And there seems to be some proof of that. That is because the number of cases of the traditional flu, influenza A and B, have dropped sharply since mid-March, the same time the safer-at-home order was issued. There were fewer outpatient visits for the flu, and the percent of flu tests that were positive fell from 15% to 4%. Health officials say they have never seen such a steep decline in flu activity in a two week span. That leads to speculation that coronavirus cases would also be much higher if we were just going about our daily lives. So, thank you. Thank you for helping to flatten the curve. Thank you for making sacrifices to your routine to protect yourself and others. We’re not out of the woods yet, but it seems clear things would be a whole lot worse if we weren’t doing as we were told.