The progress we are seeing lately with the coronavirus is encouraging, no doubt. Governor Burgum just recently announced that he lowered the COVID-19 threat level from "Yellow" to "Green" - some stats show we have the lowest number of active cases in the state since last August. Check out the headline from KXNET yesterday - Is North Dakota nearing herd immunity?  I had to look up what that last part meant, and here is how jhsph.edu explains it "When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protection - or herd immunity - to those who are not immune to the disease"  Here are some other quick statistics - about 13 percent of North Dakotans have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Columbia University has said that a much higher number of the state may have already had the virus, their computer model estimates that of the 105 million people in America that had it - 60 percent of North Dakota was included.

 North Dakota herd immunity? Dr. Noe Mateo with Sanford Health says there are two ways to approach immunity - one option is to just simply vaccinate everybody, the other is natural infection (which he says comes with health risks). Will you get a vaccine shot? Not everyone will eagerly dive in and get one. Not everyone will get tested either, many people choose not to. "People who just don’t want to get tested, you know, people who have symptoms, people who don’t believe in COVID, whatever reason they just don’t want to get tested,”   said Brenton Nesemeier, the Director of Field Services for the North Dakota Department of Health. Whether North Dakota is near herd immunity or not, the bottom line is that doctors still insist on sticking to the safety protocols.

 

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