Protecting global health

Masking indoors

We’ve entered a new stage of the pandemic. The majority of eligible people in our state have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the test positivity rate in Illinois is less than 1% and life feels like it is returning to normal.

But with the emergence of the highly contagious Delta variant, it is clear the pandemic is not over and we must continue to follow the science. As physicians and mothers, we implore our state to resume masking indoors in public. This is essential especially to protect those still vulnerable to COVID-19, such as the unvaccinated, including children younger than 12, and the immunocompromised in whom the vaccine is less effective.

We share in our children’s joy as they enjoy summer vacation, but the recent outbreak at an Illinois camp shows that even when community case counts are low, COVID-19 will find unvaccinated people who gather unmasked, and it will spread. While the disease is often less severe in children, almost 17,000 U.S. children have had to be hospitalized because of COVID-19. Though that is a small percentage of total hospitalizations, it is a testament to the scale of devastation.

With the spread of the Delta variant, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is again wearing a mask indoors, and the World Health Organization is urging everyone, including fully vaccinated people, to mask inside in public. This is especially important when vaccine status can’t be confirmed.

The scientific evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccines prevent severe illness and death and are essential to ending the pandemic; however, they are only one layer of defense. We have more to learn about how COVID-19 affects people with long-haul symptoms, both among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Also, spread of the virus among unvaccinated people can lead to new, more dangerous and transmissible variants.

Wearing a mask indoors, no matter your vaccine status, is a way to further ensure you are not part of a transmission chain.

As we celebrate Independence Day, we must preserve the freedoms we have worked so hard to attain during the pandemic. We urge everyone to commit to wearing a mask just a little longer.

It is great seeing Chicago reopening and life returning to normal as more Americans become vaccinated. But that is not happening in other countries.

I started volunteering for The Borgen Project this year and was amazed by the statistics surrounding the pandemic. At least 602,000 Americans and nearly 4 million people worldwide have died from the coronavirus. The virus has also disrupted our national economy. Do we want other citizens of the world to die from the coronavirus because they lack the vaccine? Do we want to let another pandemic affect us in the future?

Without a serious public health plan, we are at risk. I urge Illinois U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to support the Global Health Security Act, which makes the health of our country and our world a priority.

Turning tide of disaster

The past few weeks have been difficult to stomach: 116-degree high in Portland, Oregon; 53 suspected heat-related deaths in the Phoenix area; at least 18 dead and more than 100 people still missing in a condo building collapse in Florida likely caused partly by seawater penetration; and torrential downpours, tornadoes and flooding in the Chicago area. Even looking at the U.S. alone, climate change is rapping loudly on our doors, and it’s not going to wait politely for us to answer.

Climate change is a complex problem, but we have a simple solution that many agree will help create economic innovation and prosperity: Put a fee on carbon emissions and distribute the proceeds as a dividend to each American.

This is exactly what the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act hopes to accomplish. Each and every person on the planet is shouldering the burden when companies burn fossil fuels, and this bill will correct that by adjusting the cost of production to a fair market value.

The House bill has drawn 81 co-sponsors who know what it will take to slow the flow of environmental disasters we experience year after year. We need to write to our representatives and demand their support if we want everyone including our children to live happy and secure lives.

My heart goes out to all those personally affected by these national tragedies.

— Drs. Eve Bloomgarden, Laura Zimmermann and Shikha Jain, IMPACT, Chicago

— Jonathan Rissman, Wilmette

— Michael Holler, Chicago

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