Between the increased transmissibility of the omicron variant and the current seasonal surge that hasn’t peaked, the United States is primed for the largest wave yet of COVID-19 cases. We can only hope that the wave of hospitalizations and deaths does not also set records.
It’s time to face the fact that nearly everyone is going to get COVID-19. We need to stop treating the coronavirus like the bubonic plague, or like a punishment for sin, and start treating it like an endemic disease.
Even if you wear your mask, refuse to interact with unvaccinated children, force everyone around you to wear a mask, and sanitize your hands like crazy, you’re going to get COVID-19 — and you’ll probably get it repeatedly.
Individuals should get vaccinated, not so much to prevent infection — the vaccines do help somewhat on that score in the short term, but breakthrough cases seem extremely common — but to make their inevitable infections less serious. Most coronavirus cases are mild, meaning they don’t require hospitalization, but those “mild” cases are often unpleasant and debilitating for days. The vaccines make the mild cases milder.
More importantly, vaccination reduces by 90% the likelihood that you will be hospitalized or killed by the virus.
The Biden administration needs to accept that everyone is going to get COVID-19 and change its behaviors accordingly. Mostly, it should build up a massive infrastructure of therapeutics. The Food and Drug Administration should accelerate the approval of Pfizer’s Paxlovid and subsidize the mass production and distribution of the drug, which has been found to reduce hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk COVID-19 patients by 90%.
Monoclonal antibodies, when taken promptly enough, have also proven incredibly effective. Unless they are mooted by Paxlovid, states and the federal government should expand the availability of this treatment.
Also, since everyone’s going to get it, everyone should have rapid tests at home. Rapid tests at home help you to discern whether your headache, fever, and cough stem from COVID-19 or not. They also help you know whether you’re contagious days after your symptoms end. Bizarrely, the Biden White House has mocked the notion of getting everyone at-home tests.
Biden and company are lukewarm on at-home testing and on therapeutics in part because they are still fighting an unwinnable war.
This should be news worth celebrating.
Tho when asked about the finding on NBC’s “Today,” CDC director Walensky says: “So another great tool in our toolbox, but the best way to protect yourself against COVID is not to get it in the first place.” https://t.co/DNfShapPDj
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) December 14, 2021
That’s a horrible response. Pooh-poohing treatments and saying, “Don’t get sick in the first place,” is like dismissing a request for a fire extinguisher in the kitchen by saying, “Don’t start any grease fires in the first place.” Or perhaps, “Don’t elect Joe Biden in the first place.” For the seriously ill, it’s too late to change the past.
Municipalities also need to stop basing their mandates and restrictions on case counts and instead on hospitalizations. If the omicron variant turns out to be less severe than previous variants, then the math changes on the costs and benefits of disrupting people’s lives in order to stop infections.
The virus is changing, so we need to change our responses.
