Obstructionists make variant more worrying
Once again, we enter a new phase of pandemic uncertainty.
As we approached the end of the second year of the pandemic, we knew that the holiday season would once again present challenges. With the weather cooling and more people gathering indoors to celebrate with friends and families, an upsurge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths seemed inevitable.
And then, on Thanksgiving Day, as the U.S. holiday season launched, South Africa alerted the world to its discovery of the omicron coronavirus variant. Five days later, the first U.S. case was reported in San Francisco.
Through the weekend, more than 45 countries had reported omicron cases. By early Monday, in the United States, 15 states had joined California on the list. There’s no sugarcoating it: There’s a good chance that omicron will spread throughout the nation and the world.
Ali Mokdad, who tracks COVID-19 at the University of Washington, told NPR that if it can compete with the delta variant, omicron will be the main one circulating in this country in six to eight weeks.
What we don’t know is how concerned we should be. We don’t know yet whether omicron is more transmissible, more virulent or more likely to evade vaccines or infection-induced immunity than its predecessor variants.
But, by now, we certainly know the steps we should be taking to protect ourselves and slow the spread in our communities: social distancing, avoiding large indoor crowds, masking and vaccination. Even though the new variant might, to some extent, evade the immunity we have from vaccinations, they remain the leading weapon in our arsenal.
We know that the more COVID-19 spreads, the more it will mutate. We won’t get off this nightmarish ride until we control the spread. And that won’t happen until we vaccinate the population of this country and the rest of the world.
It’s up to us. As a nation and as a world society, we must control our destiny. And we need to do better. For those who have gotten their vaccines and booster shots, thank you. For those who haven’t, please do — not only for your sake but for those around you.
Unfortunately, in our polarized country, we’ve reached a point where the pleas to mask and vaccinate produce diminishing marginal returns. It’s clear that we’ve exhausted cajoling and that vaccine mandates are the only meaningful way to increase the vaccination rate. But the constant legal obstructionism has dampened their effectiveness.
How many more people must get sick, be hospitalized or die before the vaccine-hesitant get on board? Conservatively, 787,000 people in this country have lost their lives to COVID-19. The toll is expected to reach 1 million by February.
On a per capita basis, California is well below the national average. But that’s hardly anything to brag about. Nearly 75,000 people have died from the virus in this state. That’s one of every 530 residents.
Vaccines are far safer than the risks from COVID-19. Yet less than 64% of Californians are fully vaccinated and, worse, only 59% of the entire country. About 60 countries have higher vaccination rates than the United States. We long ago lost our claim to being a world leader.
Just as concerning, only 45% of the world population is fully vaccinated. Worse still, only 10% of the African population has gotten just a first shot. Until those numbers change, the entire world will remain vulnerable to new variants of the virus. As long as the disease keeps spreading, it will continue to produce new variants. And it doesn’t respect international borders.
We can do our part to slow the spread. We are lucky in this state and country to have access to vaccines. It’s a shame that so many of us continue to squander that good fortune.