COVID is still killing Americans
Re “Keeping track of the Omicron subvariants,” May 9
COVID-19 continues to be the third leading cause of death in our country, killing more than 300 Americans each day, a pace of 100,000 per year. Cherry-picking quotes from experts who downplay the risk is irresponsible. COVID is not like “a bad cold” or the seasonal flu.
It’s also irresponsible to say that the vaccines “will generally protect people from severe disease” without noting the flip side. Among vaccinated and boosted Americans over the age of 65, the COVID death rate is 59 per year per 100,000 people, making it more deadly than all forms of accidents combined for the group.
“Keeping my fingers crossed the development of new variants will slow” is a strategy for feeling helpless, not for disease prevention. The virus only mutates in a host, so when a hundred times as many people are infected, a hundred times as many mutations occur. The strategy to reduce the number of subvariants is to reduce the number of infections.
The virus will not get exhausted and just go away on its own. People should stop whining about being tired and get back to work on ending the pandemic. Scott Peer, Glendale