Containing COVID, yet again
New York City has upped its COVID alert level to “high.” It has not moved to reimpose mask mandates. The seeming dissonance makes sense for now. Having lived through the worst of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, we know better than to be cavalier about this virus. We think it wise for individuals to choose to wear masks indoors to protect themselves and their neighbors — which is consistent with the advice given by Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan.
But on a macro level, when a large portion of the population is free to commingle barefaced in restaurants and bars, indoor mask mandates only go so far. Ditto for schools requiring children to wear masks all day while allowing their removal during lunch. Relatedly, officials in charge too rarely communicate to the public that the type of mask worn matters greatly. Cloth coverings are less effective than surgical masks, which are less effective than N95 or KN95 respirators.
Add up these holes, and it may help explain why neighboring states and counties with and without mask mandates have often had essentially indistinguishable experiences with COVID throughout the pandemic.
Still, even if widespread wearing of high-quality masks, accompanied with a marked decrease in drinking and dining and other risky behaviors now again common in a reawakened city, significantly slowed the spread of the highly contagious COVID strain now infecting hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, that’s no longer a clear-cut lifesaver. Over the last four weeks, citywide COVID deaths have averaged just four daily. Hospitalizations, which averaged 67 per day over the last four weeks, are down to 61 per day over the last week.
A heavily vaccinated population (88% of adults are vaccinated, and 46% are boosted) combined with a less lethal though highly contagious strain means that illness, while certainly not fun, is rarely life-threatening.
Today, the biggest consequence of thousands of people coming down with the dominant strain of COVID is that it disrupts their education or, if they work in person, their jobs. At some point, those isolation rules ought to be reexamined.