It's game day...and B-B-E zip codes post a 32

Today is game day in Jaguar Country with a home boys' basketball non-conference game against Osakis. The game will be aired on 106.5 FM The Train of Norway Lake-Sunburg. The B-B-E Jaguars boys' basketball team has one game under their belt, and tonight they look to improve to 2-0 against a Mainstreeters team that's also 1-0 after beating Legacy Christian 60-38 last Friday in Sauk Centre.

I've gotten just about every picture uploaded finally from B-B-E's fall musical. They are found at the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper photo gallery at https://bonanzavalley.smugmug.com/BBEBV-Area-Fine-Arts-2021.

Today's Minnesota Department of Health COVID-19 zip code report shows 32 new cases added over the past week for the 56312, 56316 and 56325 zip codes. That figure breaks down as follows:
Belgrade 56312 - 18 new cases;
Brooten 56316 - 8 new cases;
Elrosa 56325 - 6 new cases;

The figure of 32 compares to last week's figure (December 2 report) of 23 new cases. That figure of 23 was a decline from the previous week's figure (November 29 report) of 26 new cases. Compared to the November 18 report, all weekly reports have been significantly smaller to that week's figure of 40 new cases. It is very interesting and noteworthy that we had a pretty rough-looking figure going into the Thanksgiving weekend. Following the Thanksgiving weekend, the weekly figures have hovered in the 20s. The number of 40 cases has, so far, been our biggest weekly number during the current surge. This is all happening while our communities, our churches and our school are completely wide open with almost 100 percent normal, regular activity and gatherings. Adherence to the government's "masking" recommendations hovers in the 5 percent range, at best, in just about any setting in our local area.

To review, here are the weekly new COVID-19 case totals for the B-B-E zip codes across the past five weeks. This is a cumulative figure per week:
November 11 - 25 new cases
November 18 - 40 new cases
November 29 - 26 new cases
December 2 - 23 new cases
December 9 - 32 new cases

I quick looked at the Glenwood 56334 zip code figures, and they showed a sharp decline from the past weeks' trends. The new number for Glenwood is 12 new cases. Their December 2 figure was 29 new cases. Their biggest number was posted before the Thanksgiving weekend with 53 new cases reported in the November 18 report. Their December 2 figure was 29 new cases.

In terms of B-B-E schools, their COVID-19 figure for active cases in a population of about 800 adult workers and children showed 16 cases on December 1. The school's latest number, which was posted earlier this morning, shows 9 active cases broken out as follows: 2 in the Jaguar Kids Connection program, 3 in the elementary and 4 in the high school. So there's another example where post-Thanksgiving numbers show a decline. Will numbers rise again in the coming weeks as we get deeper into winter? Time will tell. In December 2020, local COVID-19 figures dropped each week and then continued to drop in January. There was no Christmas-related increase in COVID-19 cases for our local towns. Figures stayed unusually low in February before climbing again in March and then in April of this spring when another wave swept across the upper Midwest.