Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the Week Ending June 24
COVID-19 is exploding in Florida. Arizona hospitals are filling up. Texas is seeing record numbers of cases. The reopening of the economy in most of the United States has been a tragedy and a disaster.
But here in Connecticut we’re actually doing pretty well, as this week’s prevalence map shows.
Much of what the map shows is not too different from last week. The prevalence map tracks new cases per 10,000 people in each town over the past week. Fairfield County, where the pandemic hit Connecticut first, is mostly under 2 new cases per 10,000 people. The rest of the state is mostly under 5 new cases per 10,000 people, with only five towns over that.
One of them is tiny Brooklyn, population 8,200, which is home to a prison. Brooklyn saw 98 new cases this week, much higher than any other town. That works out to 118.36 new cases per 10,000 people.
Based on many indications, our treatment of prisoners continues to be shameful with respect to inmates’ continual exposure to the virus inside the state’s facilities. Outside the prisons, though, the situation continues to improve as we cautiously, slowly, open the economy back up.
That’s how it was supposed to go. This could have been everywhere. Connecticut used its time in lockdown wisely to prepare for re-opening, and the people of our state made a tremendous effort to follow the rules and keep one another safe. Apart from a very loud but very small minority, we’ve been diligent, cautious, and respectful of one another. We haven’t fallen for the conspiracy theories and culture war garbage that has spread throughout too much of the rest of the country.
As it turns out, the cure was not worse than the disease after all.
It’s still absolutely vital to remember that our recovery remains fragile. We need to stay disciplined, wear masks whenever we’re in public, stay home whenever we can, and resist the temptation to think it’s all over. We don’t want to be like Florida, Texas, or Arizona, and we should learn from their tragedy.
Gov. Lamont joined the governors of New York and New Jersey, which are similarly recovering, in announcing a quarantine order for people coming from the hardest-hit states. He’s right to do so. Our recovery was too hard-won to risk it now.
Here’s last week’s prevalence map, for comparison:
Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the Week Ending June 17
Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.
DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, positions, or strategies expressed by the author are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of CTNewsJunkie.com.
