Protect vulnerable but give us our life back

Every day for months now, we have seen front-page headlines telling us the new daily "positive cases" for COVID. What we never learn is of that number:

1) how many cases are asymptomatic;

2) how many cases are people who have less serious symptoms that allow them to recover at home without hospitalization;

3) of the cases of people who require hospitalization, how many recover and how many die from coronavirus versus with coronavirus.

The reporting of total positive cases without this breakdown of the numbers and the fact that increased testing has increased positive cases has led to irrational fear and devastating consequences.

This incomplete reporting is then used as the basis for shutting down in-person learning in schools and shutting down restaurants, which have gone to extraordinary measures to keep patrons safe and stay open in limited fashion. Even the governor in a press conference recently, when pressed by representatives of the Restaurant Association for proof that restaurants were causing the spread of COVID, admitted to WLS-TV in Chicago that the link between cause and effect was thin.

"Contact tracing data doesn't tell you where somebody's caught it. In fact, there's no way really ... to know where somebody's contracted COVID-19," Pritzker said.

Despite this acknowledgment by the Governor, he proceeds to close down more Restaurants again, destroying the livelihoods of restaurant owners, the people they employ and the restaurant suppliers.

Treatment of COVID, as we've learned more about the disease, has become much more effective, resulting in far fewer deaths than when the virus first hit us, and treatment options continue to improve. Until there is a vaccine, (which like the annual flu vaccine may not even be 100% effective), we need to learn to live with this virus: protect the most vulnerable, but let the rest of society get back to life.

Cheryl Lykowski

Palatine