While more narrowly targeted restrictions on personal and business activities remain in use, the clear trend remains to minimize such restrictions, even in the face of caseloads that surpass the levels of last spring and summer. Government, business leaders and individuals are consistently looking for reasons not to extend or enhance protective measures rather than reasons to leave them in place. While clear and sharp political and social divides remain, they are variations on the same theme, rather than truly divergent approaches. The trends have been driven largely by the recognition of how costly the economic effects of more stringent measures have proven to be in the short-term. They have also been supported by accumulating fatigue at all levels at having to restrict our activities due to the health crisis. As a result, the numbers of cases and deaths in the U.S. have stubbornly exceeded all but the most pessimistic predictions and long surpassed our own prior expectations. The toll in Indian country has been particularly severe. According to IHS data, a total of 1,951,037 people had been tested at IHS facilities as of February 2 nd . The tests resulted in 179,279 positive confirmed cases of the virus with a positivity rate of 9.9 percent, over two percentage points higher than the U.S. average. The figures are also intended to include health facilities run directly by tribes and urban Indian clinics. However, two-thirds of tribally-run facilities and 56 percent of urban Indian clinics have not reported their testing results, so the figures are clearly undercounted. The Navajo Nation alone has experienced nearly 29,000 cases and over 1,000 deaths according to their own COVID-19 dashboard. According to the CDC, American Indian and Alaska Native populations are 1.8 times more likely than Non-Hispanic Whites to get COVID-19, 4.0 times more likely to be hospitalized and 2.6 times more likely to die from the disease. Native Americans are the most likely of the racial/ethnic groups measured to get the disease. They are a close second to Hispanic and Latino populations in likelihood of hospitalization and a close third behind a tie of both Hispanic/Latino and Black/African Americans in likelihood of death. This information is presented in the graph on the following page. Category names are those used by the CDC. Given the current state of vaccinations, we now anticipate that the pandemic will substantially be under control, although by no means fully eradicated, by the end of June this year. Following that time, we assume that COVID-19 will cease to be a major determining factor in the economy, although the effects of its ravages and of the responses needed to control it will extend far beyond that date, as will be discussed. However, the ongoing caseload and death rate of the virus beyond that time is no longer assumed to be an imminent driver of the economy.
∴ COVID-19 AND CIVIC RESPONSE
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