Covid-19 in OKC (coronavirus)

[Pete]

^^ Pete, interesting that you bring that up. You may recall my mentioning in the past that I grew up in Warr Acres just a block over from PC high. Do you remember the Vann family that went to PC during the late 70’s and early 80’s?. All of them sports standouts and a father who was ALWAYS down on the sidelines supporting his kids. They were the first family of color to move into the neighborhood, and were good people.

Bryce Vann (the oldest of five brothers) was a year younger than me and was the first black kid to letter in a sport at PC. He graduated in 1979; the school was founded in 1919.

It's unbelievable to think about now. When I was in grade school, it was still a felony to marry outside your race in Oklahoma and all the southern states. That was true until the supreme court *forced* those laws to change; it's not like there was any drive in Oklahoma to remove that horrific law. And people don't change their minds after decades of firmly held belief just because the federal government forces you to stop persecuting people.

I also remember racial jokes were very common in school and among my friends. When I got to OU, the only black kids in my classes were athletes. All the fraternities -- including my own -- were completely segregated. Our house mother only called blacks by the n-word and nobody corrected her.


This is the environment in which almost everyone over 50 in the U.S. grew up. Even among the evolved and open-minded, that old way of thinking gets into your subconscious and comes out in a million different ways.

I know this because of my own odd reflex reactions to the LGBTQ community. I grew up when being gay was absolutely never discussed; teachers would be fired, young people beaten, sons and daughters completely disowned by their families. I literally never even saw homosexuality until well into my adult life and even then it was still quite hidden. So, when I moved to California and gay marriage was made legal, intellectually I was thrilled and extremely supportive. Yet, I've been to gay weddings and felt uncomfortable. I hate that the whole thing still *feels* somehow 'wrong' to me, no matter how much my brain thinks the complete opposite.

And because of the baby boom and because medical science has made huge strides, there are a disproportionate number of people over 55 in this country right now and a good many of them were raised in a very different time (and passed on their views to the next generation) and their fear of 'others' and change is being exploited to hold this country back.

Change, in fact, is almost a universally positive and healthy process. We know more, we learn, we grow, we evolve. Yet, it can be scary especially to those of a certain age who are threatened by the new and unfamiliar. As a result, there is great political currency in forwarding ridiculous ideas that appeal to this age group and the uneducated. And thus they are constantly being fed this conspiracy nonsense by the 24/7 news cycle and social media. How else can you possibly explain the absurd idea that masks are somehow a control mechanism of the government rather than the modern-day all-for-the-greater-good equivalent of rationing and buying war bonds??

[Bill Robertson]

Interesting what a difference where you live makes, I was around 63rd/May, so I was in OKCPS, I ended up getting bus-ed to Northeast High from 79-83, it was pretty integrated. But then I know people that went to Edmond high schools and their experience was similar to yours.

I graduated from Northwest in ‘77 so my integration experience is similar.

[Bill Robertson]

I graduated HS in 1978 and organize all my class reunions and thus am friends with just about everyone from my class on Facebook.

I don't unfriend anyone but I've hidden 90% of them.

This was a group from the best public HS at the time and most went on to college and beyond. And I'd say almost half don't even live in Oklahoma anymore.

Yet, it's generally an ignorant, hateful, racism-just-under the surface group of hundreds, all of us turning 60 this year.

Not coincidentally, we graduated with nearly 1,000 and didn't have a single person of color (not one!!) in our class. There may have been 2 or 3 black kids in a school of 3,200 and they were the very first, ever. This was 1978 in northwest OKC, not 1950 in Mississippi.


These things run deep and anyone around my age that grew up here were strongly shaped by an almost completely segregated state (Tulsa was just as bad if not worse). They are almost all universally afraid and distrustful of anyone that doesn't look like them. And in the current political climate, they eat up all the race-bating and deep state conspiracy theories with a big spoon.

Very good take on how our age and how that time of our lives shape our future views to a large part.

[rezman]

Bryce Vann (the oldest of five brothers) was a year younger than me and was the first black kid to letter in a sport at PC. He graduated in 1979; the school was founded in 1919.

I know all this is off topic, but I remember them well. We lived just a couple blocks apart. They were on 50th St. and we were on 47th, and used to interact in the neighborhood from time to time, but never hung out. There were 4 or 5 kids... I remember Bryce, Bruce and Brandy, but don't recall the other kids names.

[jerrywall]

In my complaints about the Edmond council and their resistance to enact any sort of mask ordinance, I had avoided trying to sound ageist, but one of the things I noticed was the age/race divide on the mask stance. The two main opposition to any mask mandates in Edmond are the two 72 year old white men, and one of those is the mayor. And if you've heard either men talk about mask mandates, well, they're the ones who think the anti-mask folks have good points when they say the mask poisons you with CO2. For comparison, my father was a councilman in Edmond in the 80's and if he was still alive he still wouldn't be in his 70's yet. The mayor at the time was Carl Reherman, who was in his 40s. In fact, from what I recall most or all of the council was younger then. I've got to imagine if the makeup was similar today, Edmond might already have a mask mandate.

[pw405]

I composited some trends from NY Times interactive page: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...rus-cases.html

So, keep in mind that the graph scaling here isn't the same. The scaling tightens down around the CURRENT max values, and their dashboard ignores the recent data problems we had, omitting the 800 cases from Sunday/Monday.

What I see though, is almost the same story. Cases begin ticking up, setting new records week after week. Deaths rate ticks up in Texas, eventually setting new record after new record. I could see an argument made for OK's urban population density being less, that perhaps we will not see our daily cases continue to break as many records for as long as Texas did. Additionally, Texas % of positive tests got way higher than ours. Hopefully the record daily deaths counts are behind us in OK. I just don't see very much in the data to support that theory at this time:

[TheTravellers]

I graduated from Northwest in ‘77 so my integration experience is similar.

I guess we were lucky, I had integrated schools pretty much all the way through - walked to Burbank Elementary, which had busing make it integrated about 3rd-4th grade (1974-5), I think, then I got bused to Longfellow 5th grade center on Lincoln, then bused to Hoover for 6-8, then bused (and drove) to Northeast for 9-12. Shaped my worldview for the better, I didn't grow up with the same (horrible) philosophy my parents had.

[TheTravellers]

... The two main opposition to any mask mandates in Edmond are the two 72 year old white men, and one of those is the mayor. ...

This is exactly why I try to vote out (or not vote for) old white (sometimes rich) men in *every* election, tired of them running the country, time to change.

[Pete]

I know all this is off topic, but I remember them well. We lived just a couple blocks apart. They were on 50th St. and we were on 47th, and used to interact in the neighborhood from time to time, but never hung out. There were 4 or 5 kids... I remember Bryce, Bruce and Brandy, but don't recall the other kids names.

Bryatt as well. He played basketball at OU.

[rezman]

I guess we were lucky, I had integrated schools pretty much all the way through - walked to Burbank Elementary, which had busing make it integrated about 3rd-4th grade (1974-5), I think, then I got bused to Longfellow 5th grade center on Lincoln, then bused to Hoover for 6-8, then bused (and drove) to Northeast for 9-12. Shaped my worldview for the better, I didn't grow up with the same (horrible) philosophy my parents had.

I have to say my parents weren't like that. They were from those old era's, the depression and WWII, but didn't tolerate that garbage in our house. All the bad stuff I learned came from outside the home. I remember a coulple times when both of my grandpa's made wise cracks and my dad turning to me and telling me don't listen to that.

[TheTravellers]

I have to say my parents weren't like that. They were from those old era's, the depression and WWII, but didn't tolerate that garbage in our house. All the bad stuff I learned came from outside the home. I remember times when both of my grandpa's make wise cracks and my dad turning to me and telling me don't listen to that.

They were some of the good ones, lucky you! My mom's not as bad as my dad was, so that helped a little, but it was just weird having 180 degree viewpoint differences from them.

[oklip955]

Never understood the race thing growing up. My dad had friends of almost every race. One of his best friends was African Amercan. The guy had an electrical company, the family lived on an acreage, had a home that looked like it came out of one of the house magazines, the kids had horses and other animals and were active in showing them. My dad was an immigrant who worked in a steel mill in Calif. The guy who come over and help teach my dad how to do remodeling on our house. I guess that framed my idea of African Americans. Nice people, very successful. My dad also had friends he worked with that were Hispanic, "hill billy" as they called themselves and Italians and Slovenians who were also immigrants. Our school was mixed.

[chuck5815]

This is exactly why I try to vote out (or not vote for) old white (sometimes rich) men in *every* election, tired of them running the country, time to change.

Guess you'll be voting for Kanye, then?

[Pete]

This literally just popped up on my FB feed.

I went to HS with these people and they all went to college.

This is the mindset of a huge number of those over 55 and not coincidentally a lot of these same people think the virus is a hoax, won't take a vaccine when ready, think masks are mind control and for the weak, and are increasingly anti-science and anti-vaxx.

[Pete]

737 new cases today. Previous record for a Thursday was last week, 628.

7-day rolling average is 766, a new all-time high.

3 more people have died.

[soonerguru]

Duplicate post.

[soonerguru]

For perspective, I just read an AP story in the Oklahoman. Oklahoma has now had more COVID-19 cases than the entire nation of Japan.

From the article: "Nationwide, Japan had 775 new confirmed cases Wednesday, the largest daily increase since 720 on April 11 during an earlier peak, for a national total of 27,029 cases."

[TheTravellers]

For perspective, I just read an AP story in the Oklahoman. Oklahoma has now had more COVID-19 cases than the entire nation of Japan.

From the article: "Nationwide, Japan had 775 new confirmed cases Wednesday, the largest daily increase since 720 on April 11 during an earlier peak, for a national total of 27,029 cases."

And Japan has about 30 times the population of OK.

[midtownokcer]

For perspective, I just read an AP story in the Oklahoman. Oklahoma has now had more COVID-19 cases than the entire nation of Japan.

From the article: "Nationwide, Japan had 775 new confirmed cases Wednesday, the largest daily increase since 720 on April 11 during an earlier peak, for a national total of 27,029 cases."

Also, Oklahoma has 2x the amount of cases of South Korea now. The population is 50+ million and it is incredibly dense. This blows my mind because early on, they had the most cases (excluding China) of any country at the time. I remember thinking "it is out of control there" and didn't think we'd ever see those numbers in America. They're currently sitting just under 14,000 cases with 12,500+ recovered.

I was in Japan and Korea late last year (pre-pandemic). While most people weren't wearing masks back then, I'd say maybe 20-25% were wearing them. I admired the collective care and attitudes I experienced in both countries. We really need to follow their lead because it seems like they've done a good job at containing it.

[Bill Robertson]

I was in Japan and Korea late last year (pre-pandemic). While most people weren't wearing masks back then, I'd say maybe 20-25% were wearing them. I admired the collective care and attitudes I experienced in both countries. We really need to follow their lead because it seems like they've done a good job at containing it.

They as a people don’t have the “Nothing matters but me” philosophy that is turning out to be way more prevalent here than I ever thought it was. I’ve learned a lot through this virus. This attitude will make getting over this virus in the US exceedingly difficult.

[Timshel]

Assuming the numbers on the OK County website are now accurate (they appear to have been updated from their obviously inaccurate lows), a glimmer of local good news is that OK County cases seem to have dropped quicker than the statewide numbers the last few days. Still not where we need to be but it is an improvement, which will hopefully be further improved by the mask ordinance.

https://occhd2.maps.arcgis.com/apps/...db9678f4d33cc9

[Bunty]

The last hour might he been the scariest for me since this whole COVID crap started. After our 40th HS reunion a few years ago I started a FB group for people I went to grade school with in the 60s. A thread started in the group about the conspiracy theory of this virus thing being a way to create a cashless society. OMG! Within a few hours the thread blew up with my friends and their friends posting all of their beliefs that there is no virus and it’s just the government, banks, media, etc. trying to take complete control of everyone’s lives. So many of these friends are highly educated and in fairly high level professional positions in the companies they work for. And they believe in the conspiracy theories! I’m starting to think we, as a country, are in for a long road of **** because of the sheer number of people who just don’t get it or believe it.

It surely means there are still many, many people who still don't know of anyone who got very sick with covid, much less anybody who died from it. That includes me, but I don't have a huge number of friends and relatives to keep tabs with. But I take the virus seriously from hearing horror stories about it on the media. Probably too many people think they're fake stories, though. High profile people, such as Gov. Stitt, who don't get very sick and quickly recover don't help in taking it seriously.

[Pete]

I didn't really know anyone who got really sick until...

Just yesterday I saw my elderly lady neighbor out walking her dog. I used to see her almost every day but it occurred to me I hadn't seen her in quite a while.

Turns out she had been very sick with Covid-19 and in the hospital for quite a while.

Her whole body was so copromised that she now has serious heart issues and has to wear a difibulator around her neck; can't walk nearly as far or often as before.


Just a horribly sad situation. She's all alone (apart from her dog) and will never be the same again.

[pw405]

I didn't really know anyone who got really sick until...

Just yesterday I saw my elderly lady neighbor out walking her dog. I used to see her almost every day but it occurred to me I hadn't seen her in quite a while.

Turns out she had been very sick with Covid-19 and in the hospital for quite a while.

Her whole body was so copromised that she now has serious heart issues and has to wear a difibulator around her neck; can't walk nearly as far or often as before.

Just a horribly sad situation. She's all alone (apart from her dog) and will never be the same again.

Good lord... it's like we are living in two worlds. I don't understand why people like to act like it is all fake and the numbers are a lie or something. I've often heard similar sentiments to what Brad Pascale (recently fired Trump campaign lead) is pushing today. Not intending to make this a political discussion, but I'm curious, why does this narrative keep getting pushed? I've seen similar fake news posts on Facebook claiming something along the lines of "Once the Trump Admin got hands on the Florida Covid 19 data, it showed they lied about 80,000 Covid cases"

Is there any truth to any of this that we know of?



Within 1 hour, 10,000 likes and 6,000 retweets.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the Russian trolls are behind some of these rumors. Getting Americans politicized over a virus response, apparently, has been pretty effective at getting americans killed.

[Bunty]

In my complaints about the Edmond council and their resistance to enact any sort of mask ordinance, I had avoided trying to sound ageist, but one of the things I noticed was the age/race divide on the mask stance. The two main opposition to any mask mandates in Edmond are the two 72 year old white men, and one of those is the mayor. And if you've heard either men talk about mask mandates, well, they're the ones who think the anti-mask folks have good points when they say the mask poisons you with CO2. For comparison, my father was a councilman in Edmond in the 80's and if he was still alive he still wouldn't be in his 70's yet. The mayor at the time was Carl Reherman, who was in his 40s. In fact, from what I recall most or all of the council was younger then. I've got to imagine if the makeup was similar today, Edmond might already have a mask mandate.

Edmond is the no. 3 city for most number of cases and ahead of Norman, yet, still no required masks. Are Edmond hospitals not full?