Covid Corner with Dr. Gary Jacques

No man is an island, entire of itself.... --John Donne

Dear MANNM staff and Los Alamos community!

Facts, Yesterday, New Mexico had 109 new cases of covid-19. The day before it had 66. There are now 794 total cases in the state and 13 deaths. 5.6% of the tests conducted in the last 2 days came back positive. Los Alamos still has 2 confirmed cases. Commentary, Three day rolling averages for new cases is a good way to dampen some of the day to day variability in the statistics. The 3-day averages for F, S, S, and Monday are 61, 75, 66 and 85 respectively. New Mexico doesn't seem to have hit its peak yet in terms of new cases. This is not surprising. We'll keep a close watch on this. As MANNM employees have heard elsewhere, we are all wearing masks in our public spaces and exam rooms and asking patients to do the same in keeping with new guidelines issued nationally. Encouragement, John Donne wrote the famous lines "no man is an island" and "send not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee" in a work entitled "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" published in 1624. In December, 1623 Donne was suffering from an illness felt to be relapsing fever or typhus as it is now called. Much of London was suffering from this scourge. "Devotions..." was a 23 part work with each part containing a subsection called a meditation. Meditation XVII is listed in full below: No man is an island, Entire of itself Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee --John Donne "For I am involved in mankind". Times like this remind us how interconnected we all are--not just to those in New Mexico but to New York and to China, to India and to anywhere else in the world being touched by this pandemic. Some of the deaths published in the headlines may be people we know. Most will not. We can grieve for them all, just as we can rejoice with all who escape sickness or who recover. I hope this brief history lesson reminds us this isn't the first plague to afflict mankind and it won't be the last. Even as we hit our darkest week yet as a nation we know this trial will not last. Easter comes later this week. There is more to life than illness and death. Dr. Jacques