Did I miss the end of COVID?
I admit I have been watching a lot of football lately, so did I somehow miss the end of the COVID pandemic? I ventured out to a large, spacious restaurant in Danbury the other day, put on my mask, got ready to show my triple vaccinated booster card and guess what? Nothing. No request for a card, nobody masked except the waitstaff, and my request to sit far away from others was greeted with an eye roll. Same situation at big box stores: little masking, lots of crowding together, coughing, yelling, sniffling and sneezing.
Well, after a nice meal in Danbury, I drove home and flipped on the TV. At least two of the cable news outlets had on guests who were proclaiming COVID over. A quick Google search produced no shortage of articles declaring the same thing.
So, I rechecked death rates from COVID: There were 86 dead just on Jan. 21 in Connecticut, and 3,866 for the whole country on the same day. If the average number of seats on a plane is 138, that’s 28 crashes a day. Would you be heading to the airport if that were true?
Connecticut surpassed 10,000 deaths by COVID recently. Hospital systems in nearly half of the states have postponed elective surgeries due to overcrowding from COVID, Reuters found. (Connecticut did for a while, too.)
One prominent Connecticut doctor, Gregory Shangold, former president of the Connecticut State Medical Society, noted: “If you define capacity as the physical space as well as the staff, we’re definitely above capacity. Rooms are filled, patients are staying in emergency rooms ... Do you do surgeries and things like that, or are we so overwhelmed that we can’t pay as much attention to the details that we normally do?”
The picture for kids is equally grim. Pediatric coronavirus hospitalizations in Connecticut rose dramatically last month. In one week, 21 children per day were hospitalized across the state, doubling the average number of pediatric coronavirus patients from last year.
Worldwide, many people still have not been vaccinated. That means the prospect for the next Omicron-type variant getting here is far from zero.
Despite these terrifying numbers, it is clear from my few ventures outside that many people have given up. Not all, but many. A lot of people in relatively compliant Connecticut are completely exhausted, tired of COVID, tired of conversations about COVID, tired of fights about masking, of restrictions on sports and of constant reminders to get fully vaccinated.
Why? Partly lousy messaging from politicians and public health authorities. People don’t believe that the virus can be contained. So some say, Why bother?
So, I rechecked death rates from COVID: There were 86 dead just on Jan. 21 in Connecticut, and 3,866 for the whole country on the same day. If the average number of seats on a plane is 138, that’s 28 crashes a day. Would you be heading to the airport if that were true?
Moreover, they keep hearing omicron is mild. Again, why bother?
There are good reasons for hope. There is some evidence, scientific and anecdotal, that the omicron variant is starting to wane. New antiviral pills are showing promise in treating people infected with COVID. And we are doing a bit better in monitoring wastewater to get accurate readings on where the virus is and whether anything new has suddenly appeared.
Still, it is too soon to simply give up. The No. 1 thing to do is get vaccinated — three doses, and four if you are in a high-risk category. Vaccination with three shots has been shown to reduce your risk of death by more than 94 percent! Whatever rubbish you see on the internet questioning vaccine safety, that 94 percent number ought to be the final word on what to do.
What else? Keep testing. If you are able to get COVID tests, use them. If you are positive, stay home. Also, if you are positive, you need to call a doctor to see if you need antibodies or antivirals.
If you work in high-risk settings, keep masking and try to avoid poorly ventilated, crowded spaces. I myself pushed a vacation trip to later in the year, figuring COVID rates will fall. And although I will go out a bit, I still mask and try not to wind up in places that are jammed nose-to-nose.
So, it isn’t yet time to surrender to COVID just because we are tired of avoiding it. Not when it is easy to do simple things that lower your risk of death. How long will this go on? Who knows? But just because we see many deaths from viral infections doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying to reduce them.