The reckless and the fearful dominate COVID’S second year
Last year may have been the strangest in decades, but 2021 in some ways has been no less unsettling.
Perfectly normal, decent people across the land insist either on revisiting another century’s debates over vaccines or believe that a vaccine is like cosmetic surgery — potentially effective but purely a matter of personal preference, even during a pandemic.
On the flip side, alas, are a surprising number of equally decent people in pursuit of zero risk, who wear a mask — to cite one of many possible examples — even when alone on a pedestrian path virtually devoid of other humans, not to mention those who favor indoor mask mandates even when literally everyone is vaccinated.
Does anyone actually know what incremental risk exists in attending a small-venue concert without a mask when vaccination proof is required for entry? If we are going to be forced by such establishments to wear masks when everyone is vaccinated, in a city with a high vaccination rate, then what would eventually trigger relief? When infections from the Delta variant subside? Let us hope, but they have fallen dramatically in a number of states where similar or more draconian mandates persist.
The same holds true abroad. In Portugal, notes The Wall Street Journal, “close to 100 percent of people over the age of 50 have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the Portuguese government. For those between the ages of 25 and 49 it is 95 percent and from 12 to 17 it is 88 percent.” And yet Portugal requires masks at all soccer stadiums, as well as on public transportation, “in schools for students 10 and older, and for employees in shops, res
taurants and bars.”
To be sure, the coronavirus hasn’t disappeared in Portugal, but that’s unlikely to happen anywhere.
Blessedly, Americans have been spared mask mandates in outdoor stadiums despite predictably dire warnings at the onset of the college football season by health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who agreed with a news host that “Covid was about to have a feast.” The reality, as NBC reported in midoctober, was that Covid cases mostly plummeted even as the football season gained steam.
Everyone has a different risk tolerance, and I’m not suggesting mine is the gold standard. I tried to be careful during 2020, but I also played pickleball outdoors once a week with friends as far back as June, volunteered a weekly shift for most of that year at a non-profit that supplies food to the needy, and often dined outdoors once restaurants reopened. Many people my age chose a more cautious course, which is entirely defensible.
What seems clear from the perspective of a year later, however, is that the only transformational defense against the pandemic is vaccination — which is why I’ve had all three shots, plus one for the flu.
“Vaccines turn Covid into a mild disease,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told The New York Times. He cautioned that a mild disease can still kill vulnerable people, especially the elderly with underlying medical conditions. But does that justify masking vaccinated people again and again in a state of semi-permanent crisis? As Covid becomes endemic, that argument for masks may never be retired.
As for the unvaccinated, they’ve chosen to subject themselves to greater risk. Forcing the rest of us to help protect them punishes responsible citizens.
In Colorado, the latest calls for a state-imposed indoor mask mandate are based on worries about overtaxed hospitals. Any mandate would be temporary, we are assured. But temporary as in what? The rest of winter? No thanks. Health officials and pundits have been chafing for another mask mandate for months and will always find reasons for why it’s not quite time to return to normal.
Let employers protect their workers if they wish with vaccination mandates — or imitate Delta airlines and impose a monthly health-insurance surcharge for employees who aren’t fully vaccinated. Since Delta announced the policy in late August, the percentage of vaccinated employees has risen from 75% to over 90%.
Vaccine “skeptics” — the central vector of this lingering crisis — come from every community and occupation but have one thing in common: They are rarely old. The vaccination rate among elderly Americans is extremely high. Among those 65 to 75, for example, nearly 90% are fully vaccinated and many of the remainders have received at least one shot, according to the Mayo Clinic tracker.
In other words, if COVID were an equal-opportunity killer among age groups, most of today’s skeptics would almost certainly be jumping the line to get a shot rather than sputtering about minuscule risks and the tyranny of politicians and public health officials.
It’s easy, of course, to be irritated by politicians and health officials, especially those who misstate scientific data to bolster their message or who repeatedly exaggerate the threat to children. As The New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted recently, “For children without a serious medical condition, the danger of severe COVID is so low as to be difficult to quantify.”
Yet so what if a depressing number of politicians and health officials have revealed themselves as well-intentioned propagandists? Is anyone surprised? The fact remains that deaths have plummeted because vaccines work.
And if you won’t get a vaccine to help us emerge from our COVID twilight because you resent bossy officials who shade the truth, then who’s the bigger fool?