Maine people are making “closing the barn door after the horse” errors that countries, President Trump and states have made, minimizing and acting belatedly.

A Cape Elizabeth parental update (reported in the Press Herald) wrongly stated “… this is not a virus that we can contain by quarantining.” That’s the purpose of quarantining: to limit the viral spread. If someone’s infected, symptomatic or not, but has no contact with others, they can’t infect others.”Contact” means physical and indirect contact (e.g., virus-containing droplets in the air or the virus lingering on a surface they touched).

Every infected person, with symptoms or not, can transmit to others. A child carrying the virus with no symptoms (they’re least likely to be ill, i.e., to have symptoms) can infect a grandparent, who may well die.

Gov. Mills states, “Things are likely to get worse.” No: without question, will get worse. Close everything non-essential. Now!

COVID-19 attacks the lungs. Generally, the older you are (older lungs, weaker immune system), or the less healthy you are, the more vulnerable to infection, so the less healthy and elderly should self isolate. Now!

What you see today, X “cases” in Maine, means: X number of people who had symptoms sought testing, testing was done with a non-defective kit and the results are back and reported. The actual number of those infected is higher.

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What we see is history, up to 14-plus days ago (incubation period), not today’s infection rate. Leaders must understand this, and act now!

Proven facts give us the power to do the right thing.

Louise Davis

advanced practice nurse

Portland

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