The Bahamas reopened to tourism on July 1 after a two-month lockdown, confident the islands had the spread of coronavirus under control. Almost immediately, the number of cases in the Bahamas spiked. Many tourists came from Florida, which has had more than 430,000 coronavirus cases, a figure larger than the entire population of the Bahamas.One hopes that my beloved Island fares better.
The above is the content of the last episode in this saga, from July. Reporting in 'The Block Island Times' since then have, mostly, been non-negative. Town revenue when last reported was down, but by less than it might have been.
But...
For the last few weeks, the Medical Center has been reporting increasing number of cases. This is from today's story.
"I would say 30 of them are from that point, and 20 of those 40 are in the last 10 days. It's blossomed for us," said Warcup. He noted that in the past he had seen many asymptomatic cases, but "in the last 10 days we have been seeing more symptomatic respiratory symptoms."As everywhere else, if populations ignore the science, bad things happen. The Island has about 900 settled residents, and some second home folks who spend time there well off season. We stay, mostly, during off season. When we left to go at the end of October, 'The Times' reported that the last waste water Covid test came up 0. Phew. In the last six weeks, geometric progression is teaching Islanders some math. A significant proportion of Islanders could be in danger before New Years if they don't mind their Ps and Qs.
[update]
This is exactly the point.
A virus carrying one mutation -- a small genetic change they've flagged as C2416T -- was apparently carried to the conference by a single person, and ended up infecting 245,000 people. A second viral strain with a mutation known as G26233T ended up in 88,000 people.Ain't science a gas?
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