State officials meet at old courthouse with Lewis County leaders for coronavirus update

Several Lewis County leaders met earlier last week with State officials to receive an update on the Coronavirus.

During the meeting, Dr. John Dunn, State Epidemiologist, gave a very detailed presentation and also a question and answer session.

So far during the month of January, Covid 19 numbers have been steadily rising in both Tennessee and Lewis County, especially within the school system. It is also affecting local businesses as well with numerous staff outages. Many of these businesses are already short-handed.

For specific information and stats on this pandemic, Dr. Dunn referred people to the State's Covid 19 website located at http://www.tn.gov/health/cedep/ncov.html

Along with Covid 19, the Flu was also discussed because of its resurgence in our state this year.According to the Walgreens Flu Index, Tennessee ranks #3 in the country for total flu cases. Three cities in Tennessee also ranked in the top 10 among nationwide for total flu cases this past week, which include Knoxville, at #1, Chattanooga at #4 and Nashville at #7.

Dr. Dunn ended the meeting by reminding everyone they can help avoid viruses by washing their hands regularly, eating healthy and avoiding people who are sick.

The meeting went into a lengthy question and answer forum where local officials put questions to Dr. Dunn, and Governor Lee's Deputy COO Matt Van Epps. It was also a time to congratulate Lewis County Health Department and Hohenwald medical facilities for the great way that they approached the Coronavirus, not just in its early days two years ago but recently as well with the influx of the new virus. While the county watched on local television channels hundreds, if not thousands, of people in cars going around various Covid injection centers in Nashville, we in the county only had to phone the Lewis County Health Department and arrange a time for the injection, usually the following day.

As this meeting was full of graphics and spreadsheets, it all led back to the computer, and if you were unsure of anything, to type in the government website and get more information from designated pages.

All well and good, however a lot of Lewis County's population, especially the older population, do not have a computer and if they did, could probably not turn it on. In my view at least a quarter of the people in the county cannot understand what is happening. They get most of the information they have from local television, and when they go off air, refer to channels such as Fox or CNN that give very differing views on the same subject. So to give an assessment on what is happening virus wise in Lewis County or the other counties in Tennessee, you would really have to have a 100% survey of people, not 75%.

Now if that is just Lewis County, and 75% of all Tennessee, are we to assume that we are only getting a 75% insight into people infected with Coronvirus? If so, in some ways these surveys and graphics really are, or could be, misleading. Once again, the older generation being left out of things because of lack of knowledge in the workings of the computer that really runs everything nowadays. Your comments would be welcomed.