La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

By the numbers. The cliche is life is a numbers game. Start with 19. COVID-19 stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The year the virus appeared is part of its name.

The favorite number for restaurants is 200. The hope has been that new infections would stay below 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in Skagit County in a two week period. That is one-half the magic combination to allow restaurants to continue to seat inside diners at 50% capacity.

The twin metric to beat is five hospitalizations per week.

Skagit County has not struck out becasue Gov. Jay Inslee and the state health department jiggle and modify their rules. Skagit County counted about 500 total new coronavirus cases in April. The state pegged the county’s new cases at 267.5 per 100,000 May 2. That number rose steadily throughout April.

New April hospitalizations in Skagit County were 34, more than one a day, way above the five per week.

The numbers add up but Inslee kept the county in Phase 3. We are not being returned to Phase 2 at week’s end. It remains one of 19 counties, 49% of the 39 counties, with rates of new infections above 200 per 100,000 residents.

Inslee scheduled the next evaluation for May 3, with changes in counties status to take affect May 7. The counties got one more day to prepare when Inslee made May 4 the update date.

The pandemic affects us all. Our children are growing up in the time of the coronavirus. School has changed dramatically in every way, with high school sports completely upended. The superb high school volleyball team had won back-to-back championships in 2018 and 2019. The girls basketball team finished second in March 2020. Most of the players are in school this year. Alas, zero is the number of tournaments for statewide championships in which La Conners high school teams will complete.

Here is a personal number 199. This is the 199th issue of the La Conner Weekly News printed under my ownership. Nine more to 208, finishing my fourth year of publishing. Then, on July 1, the first day of the seventh month, year five starts, in the middle is the second year of the world’s most terrible pandemic since the 1918-1921 three year flu pandemic.