This will end, all this coronavirus crap, once the following three checkmarks are applied:
✓ Treatments better manage symptoms
✓ Death rates go way down
✓ People care for each other
I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm not a researcher, a clinician, a doctor, a nurse, or anything in this society more significant than a sorry sports writer. But I'll tell you this, from that very perspective, and I don't care who thinks we should be afraid to talk about it: Pittsburgh's managing all of the above as well as any major city in America.
Per the sports parlance, we're winning.
That doesn't mean we've won, before the hypersensitive freak out. It doesn't even mean we're a certain percentage of the way toward a complete victory, as there's no way of knowing how long this'll linger. But it does mean that, to date, the city that handled the 1918 influenza pandemic worse than any in the country is now, a century later, flipping that script upside down.
Set aside the remarkable research being done at Pitt on treatments and a vaccine, both of which already have merited global accolades, both of which would represent epic victories for the city even if merely contributing toward solutions, and it's still evident we're winning on the two more immediate fronts.
Our death rates aren't just down. By U.S. city standards, they're barely on the radar.
As of 11 p.m. yesterday, 13 metro regions counted at least 100 deaths, with New York City tragically far, far ahead of any other at 10,482, a mindbending figure that's nearly triple the toll of 9/11. Next is Detroit at 1,190, then Chicago at 656, New Orleans at 526, Boston at 441.
The Pittsburgh metro region, counting Allegheny and all contiguous counties: 42.
Allegheny County alone: 19.
I mean, why are we afraid to talk about this?
Our regional figure is so low I couldn't locate a single ranking for us anywhere. One list ran 50 deep, and we were left off.
Yesterday, we lost not a single life in Allegheny County. The day before, we lost one. Every life is precious, and I'm not diminishing that. But our number of cases has been a cumulative 857, we've lost 19 lives, all of them were 65 or older, and the fatality rate is 2.2 percent. Those are all very low. To the latter, the World Health Organization's current estimate on the global fatality rate is 3.4 percent. In the U.S., it's 3.9 percent. We're at half that.
Of course, it helps that we've kept cases way down, as illustrated by this graphic from Allegheny County's site:
ALLEGHENY COUNTYCheck out the vertical bars across the top. Those are new cases, day by day. On March 30, the county peaked at 79 cases that day. Since then, we've dropped as low as the teens.
That's not just flattening the curve. That's Cam Heyward-ing the curve.
Additionally note from up there that, of those 836 total cases, only 130 required hospitalization, 48 needed to go to ICU, and 25 needed a ventilator.
Here are two more telling graphics from the New York Times, which has been bringing Pulitzer-level, round-the-clock reporting on coronavirus:
THE NEW YORK TIMESDon't mind the details of the data, which compares regions' rates at acquiring new cases, and focus instead on the red trend lines for Pittsburgh. The first is in a free fall, and the second barely budged from the beginning. These are outstanding, among the best in the country. And I'll stress that population isn't a factor in either.
Again, why are we afraid to talk about this?
Is it because someone will wag a finger that we'd send the wrong signal to the public?
And, in turn, that everyone will rush out to a local rave club and bash sweaty bodies all night long?
Come on. Let's give each other a little credit.
And praise, as well. Instead of sledgehammering the citizenry daily with bad news and arbitrary, reckless forecasts, why not a bit of positive reinforcement for Pittsburgh quite possibly showing a way out of this?
Wouldn't that be uplifting, if only to feel like what we're doing is making a difference?
Let's hear it for our medical community, our academics, our service workers who keep essential needs coming ... heck, even for ourselves.
Feel free to laugh, but I've been convinced ever since that March 12 cancellation of the Penguins' game in Columbus, and maybe in part because of it, we were forced to take this thing seriously before most cities. This being a sports culture to the core, don't tell me that isn't plausible. I know that's when it hit me.
Behavior matters more than anything in this scenario and, beyond a couple ugly early scenes on the South Side, we've stayed inside, stayed separated, stayed safe. That's been evident all over, but especially at grocery stores, where it's now common to see masks, gloves and end-arounds each time a cart comes our way. Here in the Strip yesterday, there was more foot traffic than the norm the day before Easter, but it was all orderly, all visibly aware.
So go ahead, take a bow. Brag about it. Enjoy the day's victory, as Clint Hurdle would always advise. And if anyone snarls about it, tell them to socially distance themselves all the way to the wrong end of the commonwealth.
