Dr. Hall -- Dunn County is back to yellow!

Dunn County update - we're back to YELLOW! Good news - our cases have dropped, putting us back in the Yellow/Medium Community Level. Eau Claire is still at high, for now, but that may change with this Thursday's update from CDC. It may depend a bit on what is happening with hospitalizations there - EC has had a big two weeks in that regard. When I looked at the more granular data on cases in EC, they also have had a much higher case burden in people aged 70+ in the past few weeks than they typically do. That disproportionately high number of cases in the older age groups is almost certainly driving these hospitalizations (one wonders if there is a nursing home or retirement community outbreak). Again, the vast majority of hospitalizations are happening in those aged 70+, so if that's you, please make sure you've had your second booster. Happily, none of the three counties has had a death in the past week, and in the past month, there has been only one, in Chippewa. Things truly are changing in this pandemic - we know that there has been very high case activity, yet hospitalizations have been much lower than in previous surges and deaths even lower still. Right now, we truly seem to be moving toward endemicity with a relatively low mortality rate, due to high population immunity from vaccines and prior infections and possibly also due to a less lethal variant (it's practically impossible to tease that out with the data we have). This is very good and will hopefully continue to be the trend (a new variant could change this, but let's hope it won't). This infection can still really throw you for a loop, even if you're a healthy person, so if you have something important coming up that you don't want to be sick for or if you are high risk, it still makes sense to consider taking precautions, depending on the situation. But I'm hopeful for the direction we're currently headed.