No more fearmongering, no more lockdowns, no vaccine mandates. The disease is here to stay and we need to return to something like normal before it's too late.
The problem with declaring the virus endemic and ceasing to advocate for mask/vaccine mandates is simply that we health care workers are overwhelmed and our system is overtaxed due mostly to the influx of unvaccinated COVID patients. Usually at this time of year I'll see 40 patients in clinic for a variety of issues but now we're hovering around double that. I'm sending younger and younger people to the hospital for hypoxia due to COVID related issues and it's not clear what makes the difference for one person versus another as far as how severe their immune response will be - unless they're vaccinated.
The very lowest common denominator of action we can all take is to wear a mask indoors - truly this doesn't infringe on any liberties and my 6 year old is perfectly capable of doing so. We're not having kids mask up because we're afraid of what might happen to them due to the virus (although it's much more concerning than last year at this time) but because when this virus runs unchecked through a population it's more likely to mutate into something that our current vaccines don't cover and we're back to square one.
I get that everyone is tired of all this - working in health care and seeing the same complaints day after day gets old also but we're not able or willing to stop providing care to those who need it.
I had C19 and recovered after 3 days. But I get sharp pain in my chest now. Good article. Thanks. When do you think the media will stop reporting it? It’s kinda fuelling the fire and I’m getting whiplash from the opposing POVs. Makes me wish someone famous was assassinated so the media could change the narrative.
Except it's not like the 'flu. Nobody aged 40, a bit overweight, catches the 'flu and dies 2 weeks later like a man in our street. Nobody in their 30s catches the 'flu and is so devastated by long 'flu that they still can't walk 3 months down the line.
Yes, Covid will eventually become endemic, as happened with the 'flu, but it will remain a much more serious disease for those unlucky enough to catch it.
Very few people under the age of 70 become seriously ill with the'flu. That is not the case with Covid now, ignoring any complications from new variants even now brewing in the vast swathes of the world still unvaccinated.
Been following your work for years, and this might be the first time I have to strongly disagree. There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll try to keep it short and stick to two main points. First, COVID is nowhere near to becoming endemic. It still spreads way too fast, kills too many people, leaves many more with long-lasting health issues and, most importantly, puts way too many in the hospital. Regardless of what people - and governments - might say, most anti-COVID measures aren't put in place just to save lives. In a more specific sense, those measures are there to prevent healthcare systems from choking to death. It's amazing just how quickly even a big and well-equipped hospital can go from business as usual to people clawing at their throats while lying on the floor in the corridors. And then people with other conditions cant' get treated normally, and you get immunocompromised cancer patients mingling with COVID patients and hell reigns supreme. That sort of thing doesn't happen with the flu. As of now, the strain COVID puts on everything isn't remotely comparable to that of the flu, and it can't be treated as such.
Second, let's talk vaccine mandates. Now, I'm usually all about personal freedom (as an aside, I struggle to put a political label on myself these days. Used to consider myself a liberal, but that got way weird in recent years. Yet I'd hesitate to call myself a libertarian since those guys tend to skew uncomfortably to the right. Classical liberal, maybe? Eh, who needs labels anyway). However, trite as it may sound, one person's freedom ends where another's begins. And that has never been truer than in the context of vaccination. Erik, you said yourself numerous times that refusing the vaccine is madness. True enough, but, more importantly, an unvaccinated person presents a real and clear danger to themselves and, crucially, countless others. And no society, no matter how free, allows madmen that are a danger to themselves and others to roam around unchecked. It's not an issue of freedom, it's an issue of public safety, of protecting lives.
Anti-vaxxers kill people. An unvaccinated person is a walking manslaughter case waiting to happen, although not literally, since no one will ever be prosecuted for infecting someone else with a deadly disease. In lieu of that, society's only recourse is to incentivize vaccination. Now, a mandate is incentive - negative incentive, certainly, but incentive nonetheless, and effective, too. Honestly, I find the idea of positive incentives for vaccination iffy. "Hey, what if we pay you to not harm yourselves and others?" is, historically, a highly controversial negotiating tactic. Where I'm from, people who get vaccinated get a chance to win a car. That's just insane. Less effective than a mandate, too.
At the end of the day, if there's one type of segregation that no society can do without, it's the segregation of dangerous anti-social elements from the rest of the population. It's still unpleasant, but necessary. Hell, Solid Snake was ready to put a gun in his mouth to avoid spreading a deadly disease. While people refuse to get a simple and safe jab.
Aaaand it did get overly long, apologies for that. I should add, the subject of putting masks on children is a more comlicated one, I'd have to look into fresh data on just how much of a vector schoolchildren actually are for parents and relatives. Where I'm from, children don't wear masks, but infection rates do seem to jump up whenever kids go back to school. I personally know a few people who almost certainly got COVID from their kids, but, as always, anecdotes are not data.
The problem with declaring the virus endemic and ceasing to advocate for mask/vaccine mandates is simply that we health care workers are overwhelmed and our system is overtaxed due mostly to the influx of unvaccinated COVID patients. Usually at this time of year I'll see 40 patients in clinic for a variety of issues but now we're hovering around double that. I'm sending younger and younger people to the hospital for hypoxia due to COVID related issues and it's not clear what makes the difference for one person versus another as far as how severe their immune response will be - unless they're vaccinated.
The very lowest common denominator of action we can all take is to wear a mask indoors - truly this doesn't infringe on any liberties and my 6 year old is perfectly capable of doing so. We're not having kids mask up because we're afraid of what might happen to them due to the virus (although it's much more concerning than last year at this time) but because when this virus runs unchecked through a population it's more likely to mutate into something that our current vaccines don't cover and we're back to square one.
I get that everyone is tired of all this - working in health care and seeing the same complaints day after day gets old also but we're not able or willing to stop providing care to those who need it.
Melodramatic, but we are at a crossroads.
We can have the world that Michael Tracy fears, or the world that Erik Kain envisions.
Up to each of us to speak up.
Frankly, Tracy's world is not the U.S., and not a world that I want.
Respect for people's choices is key.
I - as do we all - have opinions, but our country is built on individual choice and if we lose that respect, we lose our country.
I had C19 and recovered after 3 days. But I get sharp pain in my chest now. Good article. Thanks. When do you think the media will stop reporting it? It’s kinda fuelling the fire and I’m getting whiplash from the opposing POVs. Makes me wish someone famous was assassinated so the media could change the narrative.
Except it's not like the 'flu. Nobody aged 40, a bit overweight, catches the 'flu and dies 2 weeks later like a man in our street. Nobody in their 30s catches the 'flu and is so devastated by long 'flu that they still can't walk 3 months down the line.
Yes, Covid will eventually become endemic, as happened with the 'flu, but it will remain a much more serious disease for those unlucky enough to catch it.
Very few people under the age of 70 become seriously ill with the'flu. That is not the case with Covid now, ignoring any complications from new variants even now brewing in the vast swathes of the world still unvaccinated.
Been following your work for years, and this might be the first time I have to strongly disagree. There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll try to keep it short and stick to two main points. First, COVID is nowhere near to becoming endemic. It still spreads way too fast, kills too many people, leaves many more with long-lasting health issues and, most importantly, puts way too many in the hospital. Regardless of what people - and governments - might say, most anti-COVID measures aren't put in place just to save lives. In a more specific sense, those measures are there to prevent healthcare systems from choking to death. It's amazing just how quickly even a big and well-equipped hospital can go from business as usual to people clawing at their throats while lying on the floor in the corridors. And then people with other conditions cant' get treated normally, and you get immunocompromised cancer patients mingling with COVID patients and hell reigns supreme. That sort of thing doesn't happen with the flu. As of now, the strain COVID puts on everything isn't remotely comparable to that of the flu, and it can't be treated as such.
Second, let's talk vaccine mandates. Now, I'm usually all about personal freedom (as an aside, I struggle to put a political label on myself these days. Used to consider myself a liberal, but that got way weird in recent years. Yet I'd hesitate to call myself a libertarian since those guys tend to skew uncomfortably to the right. Classical liberal, maybe? Eh, who needs labels anyway). However, trite as it may sound, one person's freedom ends where another's begins. And that has never been truer than in the context of vaccination. Erik, you said yourself numerous times that refusing the vaccine is madness. True enough, but, more importantly, an unvaccinated person presents a real and clear danger to themselves and, crucially, countless others. And no society, no matter how free, allows madmen that are a danger to themselves and others to roam around unchecked. It's not an issue of freedom, it's an issue of public safety, of protecting lives.
Anti-vaxxers kill people. An unvaccinated person is a walking manslaughter case waiting to happen, although not literally, since no one will ever be prosecuted for infecting someone else with a deadly disease. In lieu of that, society's only recourse is to incentivize vaccination. Now, a mandate is incentive - negative incentive, certainly, but incentive nonetheless, and effective, too. Honestly, I find the idea of positive incentives for vaccination iffy. "Hey, what if we pay you to not harm yourselves and others?" is, historically, a highly controversial negotiating tactic. Where I'm from, people who get vaccinated get a chance to win a car. That's just insane. Less effective than a mandate, too.
At the end of the day, if there's one type of segregation that no society can do without, it's the segregation of dangerous anti-social elements from the rest of the population. It's still unpleasant, but necessary. Hell, Solid Snake was ready to put a gun in his mouth to avoid spreading a deadly disease. While people refuse to get a simple and safe jab.
Aaaand it did get overly long, apologies for that. I should add, the subject of putting masks on children is a more comlicated one, I'd have to look into fresh data on just how much of a vector schoolchildren actually are for parents and relatives. Where I'm from, children don't wear masks, but infection rates do seem to jump up whenever kids go back to school. I personally know a few people who almost certainly got COVID from their kids, but, as always, anecdotes are not data.