LETTER: Focus on virus case counts misses the whole story

The media’s incontinent cacophony that is COVID case number reporting these days skews reality. More testing, and especially more targeted testing from tracking, have accompanied the surge in known case numbers. More importantly, but less reported, fatality rates keep falling as does the length of the average hospitalization.

Gov. Steve Sisolak needs to resist his urge to shut down and hide in the face of COVID. Further shutdowns are not the answer. We shut down for almost three months and destroyed the economy. The virus is still here. We all started wearing masks everywhere. The virus is still here. We shut down bars again. The virus is still here. We could shut down again for a month or six months. The virus would reappear once we re-open, and the economy would be even more of a disaster.

Shutdowns merely kick the can down the road and destroy millions of lives as collateral damage. We need to deal with the problem, not hide from it. Waiting for some magical vaccine that may or may not materialize is folly. Gov. Sisolak can look into managing or expanding hospital space and other such solutions, if they’re ever necessary, and keep the economy open. Alternatively, he can keep shutting down like he has on a metronomic basis.

If he chooses the latter, he will be a one-term governor who will be remembered as the man who managed the demise of Las Vegas and the state of Nevada.