You wouldn’t know it from people’s behavior but we are riding a rising wave of covid cases. Calls at the office are non-stop, and it’s getting harder to get therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies. Hospital admissions are rising. Deaths, thankfully, are not (but people are still dying at a high rate, see below).
We are generally seeing a milder surge, in the sense that a smaller percentage of sick people are really, really sick. My (vaccinated) youngest, who tested positive a couple of days ago, is a snot factory, but otherwife feeling fine. We had to cancel her birthday party, but who hasn’t had to cancel an event in the last two years?
Graduation. Prom. Summer camps. All sorts of important activies are coming up, and we are largely acting as if nothing is wrong. We could have done better.
If we had a fully vaccinated population, we would probably not be testing all the time and missing important events. As it is, only 32% of Michiganders are fully vaccinated (2 shots and 1 booster). And previous infection doesn’t seem to offer as much protection with the current strains. We are seeing a ton of re-infecitons. Vaccination on the other hand prevents getting infected, at least somewhat; it lowers the risk of giving covid to others; it greatly reduces the risk of hospitalization and death. And vaccination appears to prevent complications of covid, like MIS-C in kids.
So what is our goal? What’s our end-game here?
There have been an estimated 4200 flu deaths this season—so far. We are seeing a lot of influenza very late this year so that number will rise. But even with a falling covid death rate we are seeing over 2000 covid deaths per week. Covid, even when it’s “quiet”, is the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer. Flu at it’s worst has a horrible impact on health in the US, but it’s nothing compared to covid.
Our public health system has failed us. The previous administration was actively hostile to covid mitigation measures. The current administration isn’t, but other than that hasn’t done much better. We have, as a society, given up. We can change that.
Our way out of this pandemic is clear, it’s simple, it’s understandable—vaccinate everyone, and until we do, mask up indoors during disease surges. We need to elevate public health experts and we need to write and call our state and federal representatives and tell them to continue covid funding and to listen to experts. We need to encourage vaccination both at the individual and societal levels.
On an individual level, we can make vaccination mandatory to attend private functions. It’s painful, but if we, say, require vaccination to attend a wedding or bar mitzvah, some people will decide to get shots and the event will be safer. We need to make vaccination mandatory for air travel. We need to make them mandatory to attend concerts. Probably most important, we need to add covid vaccination to our list of mandatory shots to attend school, and we need to do that weeks before school starts this fall.
This is different than a federal mandate; this is local governments, private people and businesses stepping in to fill the void left by public health failures.
Until we have vaccination rates in the 80-90% range we are likley to continue to see covid as a leading cause of death in the US. Universal vaccination will kick it right off the list. Covid will become an annoyance for most.
Sitting back and watching isn’t working.
-pal