The threat posed by COVID isn’t over yet

I write regarding the article, “‘A turning of the page’: Maryland doctors, leaders reflect on end of COVID public health emergency” (May 5), about the declaration of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I felt a serious disconnect when reading this article, starting with the comparison of the SARS epidemic to the influenza of 1918. This continues the false narrative that COVID is the same as the flu and should be regarded as such.

SARS-COV2 is not a flu. It is a Severe Acute Respiratory Disease that was and is classified as a biosafety level 3 (BSL3) pathogen that requires full personal protective equipment.

People mistakenly believe that the cold and flu symptoms they feel when they have COVID are COVID. Those symptoms are the body’s immune system working to fight the disease. COVID is the unseen, undetected vascular disease that affects the endothelia lining of your blood vessels. It can cause microclots that restrict blood flow to every organ of your body, brain shrinkage or weaken your T cells for months.

These affects are why it is a BSL-3 pathogen. How many infections can people get before they become the immunocompromised and disabled that they currently disregard?

Your article states that the rate of COVID infection is decreasing. The truth is, we have no idea what COVID is doing because we aren’t testing.

Even when children go to the hospital for flu-like symptoms, they are not tested for COVID. And with COVID forever mutating, there will be times it decreases between waves, but it will increase again because the level of transmission is high enough to qualify as a pandemic, whether we declare it as such or not.

What is criminal to me is that we have dropped mask mandates in hospitals and that doctors and nurses can refuse to mask when asked. It used to be a crime to knowingly infect someone with AIDS. What is the difference between that and sending a child to school while sick with COVID or going to work and seeing friends with known COVID?

Hospitals, by definition, treat people who are severely ill and immunocompromised. Everyone should have access to safe medical care without risking their lives and the lives of people they live with. Requiring masks is cheap and easy. It is the least we can do.