I try not to mix my TV job with my blogging, but something happened during an interview this week that I can’t get out of my head.
The interview was with Clara Reynolds of the Crises Center of Tampa Bay. We were talking to her about Covid fatigue and kids going back to school.
Clara is great. One of my favorite people. One of my favorite people to interview. She just gets it.
Toward the end, I asked Clara about the calls coming into the Crises Center. It’s always a good barometer of where we are.
She told me they had 31 suicide calls in one day. The most ever. 31. It stunned me. I kinda lost it. That’s an indication of how people are struggling right now. Covid fatigue is real.
It’s understandable, too. I look at these numbers in Hillsborough County. It now has over 12,000 students and teachers in quarantine. That’s about five percent of the entire district.
So far, Hillsborough is the only local district to defy Governor DeSantis’ ban on masks in schools. Sarasota could be next. The school board meets today to discuss a potential mask mandates.
I saw this in the Washington Post. It had a story that had previously been the Tampa Bay Times.
An obituary for a gentleman named Clark Allen. He died recently at 84 over in Lantana, Florida.
Mr. Clark was fully vaccinated, but contracted Covid anyway. A breakthrough case. His two daughters wrote this in his obituary:
“He was infected by someone who chose to not get vaccinated and his death was preventable. It is the wish of his family that everyone get vaccinated in order to prevent further death, sickness and heartbreak.”
How and where Mr. Clark contracted Covid is still unclear. It’s a good indicator to me though that we can’t let our guard down right now. The Delta variant is everywhere. It’s far more contagious than what we dealt with last year.
I’m heading into the weekend. Fully vaccinated and masked up. Back in my bubble. When will this end?