Disarmed for the fight

Uptick in COVID cases shows folly of ending nearly all pandemic-era programs

Asteady rise in recent weeks of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, while no comparison to the darkest days of the last three years, aptly demonstrates the folly of letting so many valuable pandemic-era programs needlessly expire.

Vaccine uptake, antiviral treatments, health care experience and public awareness are all greater than ever before, so there’s almost no risk of a full-blown resurgence. But the virus isn’t through with us, and maintaining successful initiatives — such as the distribution of free test kits and the publishing of reliable data — would help Americans make more informed choices for themselves and their families.

If you’ve noticed more friends and family testing positive for COVID recently, it’s not an aberration. While raw case data is no longer a reliable indication of the virus’s severity, the U.S. Centers for Disease Controls reports a 14.3% increase in hospitalizations week over week and a 10% increase in deaths.

While nothing like January 2021 or January 2022, when more than 20,000

Americans died each week, the slight increase warrants our attention — because we head into these mini-waves without some of the best tools we deployed to fight it.

The national emergency and public health emergency declarations related to COVID expired in May, ushering in a new phase of the pandemic. Since then, about 3.8 million Americans have lost their health insurance as eligibility waivers expired, and countless others have seen the parameters of their insurance change as companies were no longer compelled to cover many COVID-related costs.

Federal, state and local governments collected and disseminated public health data throughout the pandemic, recognizing that communities equipped with more information could make informed choices that slow the spread of infection. The COVID case data being collected now is haphazard and unreliable; the most informative modeling, such as community-level infection data (i.e. “community spread”), is a thing of the past.

The federal government also ended a program that would mail free COVID testing kits to anyone who requested them. While the at-home kits weren’t 100% reliable, they did well to tell an individual if they could have the virus or if they should isolate while confirming a diagnosis. How many infections were avoided because someone using a kit stayed home from work or from school rather than risk it?

And then there’s the tricky issue of “long COVID,” which is generally described as symptoms from a COVID infection that last weeks, months and even years. Precious little research has been conducted into this affliction affecting up to 23 million Americans. Little is known about how best to care for those who suffer or how to design programs that capably support them.

While the United States should not have indefinitely extended all its pandemic-era programming, a functioning federal legislature could have ended those programs no longer deemed necessary while protecting those that still had value and purpose. Providing free testing kits, for example, makes plenty of sense as colleges and secondary schools are set to welcome back students to classrooms that still lack adequate ventilation.

Unfortunately, the same partisan bickering about the pandemic that undermined the national effort against COVID infects Congress — indeed, many of those who serve are misinformation super-spreaders — leaving the American people to fend for themselves.

That’s great if you’re healthy, gainfully employed with generous medical insurance and fully vaccinated. For those who work at-risk jobs in health care, food service or agricultural settings, who lack health coverage, who are immunocompromised, cannot take the vaccines due to allergies or otherwise vulnerable, however, you’re effectively on your own.

So please, be cautious out there. Stay home if you show symptoms. Stay up to date on the vaccines. Consider masking in high-risk and poorly ventilated areas.

We know that COVID is, in all likelihood, here to stay. That is most challenging to those at greatest risk, for whom we should be doing more in the interest of protecting public health.