As of yesterday, the state of Mississippi has seen 13,731 cases of COVID-19 with 652 deaths induced by the virus. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs joined The Gallo Show this morning to stress the fact that the pandemic has not ended, so people need to stop acting like it has.
“We are still in the thick of this thing,” Dobbs said. “We are still seeing a lot of cases. We are still seeing a lot of deaths.”
Memorial Day demonstrated the fact that people are beginning to relax and partake in social gatherings outside of the current restrictions.
“If you look at our hotspots for the counties, we’ve seen people doing mass gatherings,” Dobbs explained. “The governor’s executive order still says that it’s 10 [people] indoors and 20 [people] outdoors, and people are not paying attention.”
According to the State Health Officer, these social gatherings are mostly product of the younger generation, which is resulting in more cases for that demographic.
“In a lot of areas, we are seeing young people get together,” Dobbs said. “I think they’re getting tired of it, and they want to socialize and have fun. Young people are getting sick. Young people are dying.”
While he understands the reopening of businesses is inevitable, Dobbs wholeheartedly believes there is a safe way to do it.
“As we kind of go to a more opening posture letting people get back to some normalcy, there’s a safe way to do it and an unsafe way to do it,” Dobbs said. “There’s a balance of getting businesses operating, but it can happen in the context of us doing the simple, safe thing of maintaining six feet in distance.”
He also emphasized the importance of wearing masks, whether you feel sick or not, as “most of the people who are infected have no idea.”
“The mask thing is such a simple thing to do,” Dobbs said. “If we all are wearing a mask, it will prevent 99 percent of…those infectious particles from getting around where other people can breathe them in.”
Remember, that now is not the time to ease up on precautionary actions as we have not even made it through the first wave. For context’s sake, the pandemic influenza consisted of three waves with the second wave proving the most fatal.
