“You’re going to have a lot of sick folks who caught (COVID-19) during Thanksgiving. We know this is the perfect milieu, having young folks and old folks and folks with chronic illness around the table—and then death,” [Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas] Dobbs said during a sober Mississippi State Medical Association Zoom meeting with fellow physicians on Nov. 12.
The state’s top health official urged even Mississippians who are having small holiday gatherings to observe 6 feet of social distancing and to hold the gatherings outdoors, where the chance of transmission is lower.
“We don’t really want to see Mamaw at Thanksgiving and bury her by Christmas,” MSMA President Dr. Mark Horne said during the meeting, concurring with the state health officer.
Hospital capacity to accept new patients is crumbling, Dobbs said. He cited a conversation last week with a physician who had decided to send a Mississippi patient to a hospital in Pensacola, Fla., after failing to get them in a bed anywhere in Mississippi… He urged Mississippians to exercise caution, not just when it comes to avoiding the virus, but more generally.
“Be careful, because there’s nowhere for you to go if you have a car wreck,” the state health officer said.
