Florida’s rush to undo COVID precautions heightens risks to vulnerable

In another context, policy changes that put seven million Americans at considerable risk would give us pause. We’d worry about the consequences.

If it meant saving lives or preventing serious illnesses, we’d consider suffering some piddling inconveniences for a few more months.

But entering the third year of this pandemic, the context has changed.

State and local governments and school boards — first red states, now blue states — are discarding public health precautions known to impede the spread of COVID. Not because the pandemic has ended, though this latest surge has ebbed, but because elected leaders worry that their constituents are just plain tired of the bother.

Most of us are either vaccinated or else subscribe to internet nonsense that claims a disease that has killed 940,000 Americans is no more dangerous than a seasonal flu. Political leaders assume that the two factions share an unscientific consensus that vaccinations or natural immunity have rendered them impervious to the most serious effects of the disease. Instead of eradicating COVID, our new strategy has become: “learn to live with it.”

Never mind that the virus is still killing 1,900 Americans a day, we’re rolling back the clock to 2019.

And tough luck for the 2.7% of the population with compromised immune systems for whom this return to an imagined normal means choosing between social isolation or a heighten risk of hospitalization and death. “Learn to live with it” becomes more like “learn to die with it.”

Given that there’s seven million of these folks (more than the respective populations of 35 states), you’re bound to know a few of them. They’re neighbors suffering kidney disorders or rheumatoid arthritis or HIV or any of the 450 genetic disorders that weaken immune systems. They’re the cancer patients undergoing therapies that leave them particularly vulnerable to infections. They’re transplant patients who take immune suppressant drugs to stop their bodies from rejecting donated organs. Millions more suffer from maladies like asthma, lupus and diabetes that can be dangerously exacerbated by the virus.

Vaccines seem to provide them only tepid protection. Or none at all. A study published in the Journal of Medical Economics in November found that among the fully vaccinated, the immunosuppressed were three times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID. And far more likely to die.

Just retaining mask mandates for a few more months — not lockdowns, just masks — until we know whether COVID has burned itself out or has evolved into another nasty variant, would grant something of a reprieve for the immune suppressed, not to mention us doddering oldsters. A study released earlier this month by the University of California School of Public Health found that people wearing just a simple cloth mask were 56% less likely to contract or spread COVID than those who eschew masks. The protection increased to 66% with the use of surgical masks and 83% for those wearing the widely available KN95 and the N95 masks.

But seven million vulnerable people apparently don’t comprise the critical mass necessary to soften the attitudes of the raging, self-anointed patriots who regard mask mandates, not to mention vaccine mandates, as attacks on their personal freedom. When they show up at government chambers or school board meetings in their furious opposition to mask mandates, they never utter an empathetic word for the immunocompromised. When they scream about their parental rights to send their kids to school unmasked, there’s no acknowledgment that unmasked classmates will keep thousands of at-risk students out of school.

As usual, the loud mouths only sound like a majority. An Axios/Ipsos poll earlier this month found that 56% of Americans feel it would be “a large or moderate risk to return to their pre-coronavirus life.” Only 21% of the respondents thought we should “get back to life as usual with no coronavirus mandates or requirements.” A majority (55%) oppose federal, state or local governments getting rid of COVID-19 precautions.

No surprise that the real numbers don’t add up to a rational policy, especially in Florida, where a governor who has presided over 69,000 COVID deaths can brag about outlawing mask and vaccine requirements. A governor who has yet to utter a regretful word about his state’s outsized number of COVID deaths isn’t likely to worry about the health risks that come with his “freedom agenda.”

In other contexts, Americans haven’t minded enduring sometimes maddening inconveniences on behalf of the vulnerable. Because the laws protecting the disabled, the elderly, even endangered species reflect our common decency.

Yet, seven million at-risk Americans can’t catch a break.