Offering Hospitality During the Election Season While churches are typically most used on Sunday mornings, many of our buildings are valuable assets for the entire community and provide services throughout the week. One way that churches help their communities is by opening their doors during elections and serving as a polling location. If you are interested in offering your building…
Short and (hopefully) sweet
Changes ahead
Let’s start this week with some updates.
COVID and ILI
Things continue to move in the right direction on the respiratory virus front. COVID hospital admissions are down again. So are wastewater levels, and Wisconsin falls in the “low” category for flu activity. I’ve got no recent data on RSV, but last we heard, that was headed down too.
Give it until Valentine’s Day to drop masks in church gatherings. As I’ve said before, it’s possible to have rebound spikes before the respiratory virus season abates for good. Haste makes waste, as they say, and also a lot of sick people.
Plus: asks and points of interest So it turns out that one way you can take care of your health is to take care of your back? And your humble correspondent isn’t always the best at that? All of which is to say: no essay this week, mostly bullet points. But before we get to those, let’s check in on…
Not so fast
Have we hit peak virus season yet?
At first glance, it might seem like Wisconsin has passed the high water mark for COVID, flu and RSV:
- COVID hospital admissions have dropped significantly
- So have COVID markers in wastewater
- Respiratory viruses in lab samples all seem to have plateaued or dropped a bit
At this point, you’re probably thinking “He’s got a ‘but,’ doesn’t he? What’s the ‘but’?” And you’re right, I do! All this sounds like good news — and it is. But: even though COVID hospital admissions have dropped, they’re still quite high. Hospitals and particularly intensive care units are quite full. And again, COVID admissions have fallen. But hospitalizations from flu are still climbing, as are mortality rates for all respiratory viruses.
Back to masking
Mask mask, baby
Today (or tomorrow, if you’re reading this early), the WCC will issue an advisory call to return to masking:
The Wisconsin Council of Churches strongly encourages congregations to return to using masks in worship and other gatherings. The current wave of COVID and other respiratory virus infections calls for increased caution and use of mitigation strategies.
“Nothing about us without us”
+ your pre-Christmas COVID update
I want to add a point to last week’s discussion of disability, but first, let’s take care of a couple of points.
“As more of us become disabled”
Long COVID, Disability, and Identity
Miles Griffis published an article last week at The Sick Times asking a straightforward but difficult question: Why aren’t HIV/AIDS advocacy groups taking the threat of Long COVID more seriously?
What have we been doing?
And what should you do to stay safe?
In honor of the WCC annual meeting (held very successfully at Holy Wisdom Monastery on December 5th), I thought I would pass along the Community Health Program report for the year. Skip ahead for a COVID update and some suggestions.
Back to life, back to community
Where do WE go from here?
No one would seriously argue against the idea that COVID has been hard on communities of all sizes, from the largest cities to the smallest towns. The pandemic hindered every support imaginable: schools, libraries, health care, and yes, churches. COVID also revealed the many inequities in the American health system. It made them all worse, too.
A Fall Cornucopia of Links
COVID updates and points of interest
Some weeks, I have a particular subject to dig into for this newsletter. Other weeks, the subjects are a little more diverse, shall we say. It’s one of those weeks.
Let’s get right to it.