Our COVID-19 numbers are headed in the wrong direction, Idaho. Don’t mess this up

Idaho, we’re heading in the wrong direction when it comes to the coronavirus:

• Idaho’s seven-day moving average of new confirmed cases reached 485.4 on Wednesday, up from 234 per day last month.
• The average of daily new cases has increased for 15 straight days.
• Idaho had an average of 42.2 COVID-19 patients in ICU per day in the last part of September.
• Daily hospital submissions remained well above 20 over the past week.
• The number of coronavirus cases in the Magic Valley region doubled over the past four weeks, from 187 new coronavirus cases in August to 471 last week.
• With a single-day increase of 643, Wednesday marked the fifth-highest new case count in a single day since the pandemic began.
• Ada County reported the most new cases on Wednesday, adding 86 confirmed cases to its total, which is now 11,955. Canyon County added 54 new cases Wednesday, and its total now sits at 7,779.
• Idaho’s positivity rate this week was 12.4%

We were doing so well. Toward the end of August and into the first two weeks of September, daily cases dropped to down below 300 per day, with several days below 200 new cases.

But we have started climbing back up the charts since the middle of September, a couple of weeks after Labor Day, as kids started going back to school and bars started to reopen.

This is no time to let our guard down.

If we want to keep our economy humming, if we want to get and keep our kids in schools, if we want to avoid a disastrous flu season, it is more important than ever to be vigilant and do whatever we can to stop the spread of COVID-19 cases.

This is no time to “return to normal.”

When we have low community spread, you can feel more comfortable that the chances of the presence of the novel coronavirus are relatively low. But when community spread is high, you have to assume it’s anywhere and everywhere.

The last thing we want is a regression to those early days of the pandemic when we had to shut everything down.

Yes, we know more now, and it’s clear that children and younger adults are less affected by the coronavirus. Still, children and younger adults are affected, and some have serious health complications and, unfortunately, some still will die.

Further, out-of-control community spread will certainly mean that the coronavirus will reach vulnerable populations and lead to more deaths. Even if children and young adults are less likely to be affected by coronavirus, they can still carry it and spread it, often stealthily, with no symptoms.

If you don’t want to stop the spread of coronavirus just for health reasons, do it for the economy.

Gov. Brad Little is not overstating the health of Idaho’s economy. We are at the top of the lists, for a variety of reasons, in terms of employment, credit worthiness and tax rolls.

A significant spike in cases could undo all that good work.

“Our numbers, our employment numbers in recovery are 10 times better than the national average,” Little said during a press conference Thursday. “We’re third best. We have got to continue to do what we’ve done on the COVID side to keep the trajectory it’s going on economically in Idaho. ... Our economy is not treading water. Our economy’s doing quite well. But it is contingent, as I said, on that interlock between people feeling comfortable, their employees feeling comfortable, consumers feeling comfortable, where they can go out and continue to expand the economy.”

That means continuing to do all the little things: wearing a mask in public places, limiting contact with others as much as possible, limiting your group sizes, ordering takeout from your favorite restaurants, washing your hands, washing surfaces, keeping your kids home if they’re sick.

“What we hear from the districts every week, we ask them this question, and every week they say right now it seems to be those, you know, smaller gatherings,” Dr. Christine Hahn said at Thursday’s press conference. “You know the big venues are all closed, but people are still getting together and, as the governor alluded to, we were worried a little bit about Labor Day whether that played a little bit of a role in this accelerating this. Kids are coming back to school and back to college. I think there’s a kind of an all-of-the-above type of thing going on.”

If we don’t stay vigilant and we see a big spike, the consequences for our public health — and our economy — could be huge.

“It’s a reminder to all of us,” Hahn said. “I think we all let our guard down a little bit when we’re around family, even if that family’s 10 or 20 people, it’s a little bit of a bigger crowd than we’re used to. So just a reminder this all comes on all those things that we’re worried about are going to only accelerate: more kids in school, colder weather, being indoors.”

Stay steady, Idaho. Do the right things. We were doing well.

Let’s not mess this up.