You’ve seen it clearly — or unclearly, depending on which side of the glasses you were on.
It’s the fog of COVID-19: when one’s mask, there to shield passersby from one’s droplets, directs those very same droplets of moisture up onto the lenses of the wearer’s glasses. Not only can you not breathe, now you can’t see.
While some have recommended “hacks” and workarounds (one doctor suggested the very stylish idea of putting a Band-Aid across the bridge of your nose to create a seal and trap the fog), others have decided it’s time to give up glasses for good. As a result, we’re seeing a boom in laser eye surgery.
Demand for LASIK is up 30% at one Los Angeles practice, Bloomberg reports, finding that this is a national trend. One market analyst expects the industry to double its 2018 numbers in the next few years.
This is quite a turnaround from the springtime, when lockdowns and virus fears basically grounded elective surgeries to a halt. But then, a few months of trying to see through the fog drove thousands to the seemingly extreme option of paying a stranger to cut open their eyes with a knife made out of lasers.
Other potential factors behind the LASIK boom: glasses’ reflection of the screen in video chats, the added ease of recovering at home now that people aren’t going into the office, and accelerated savings by people who couldn’t go on vacation or dine at restaurants.
There’s even a touching local LASIK story from this fall. The surgery costs $4,800, and so, there was plenty of interest when Piedmont Eye Center in Lynchburg, Virginia, recently hosted a sweepstakes with a free surgery as the prize. The six finalists included a firefighter, a healthcare worker, a police officer, and a single mother named Whitney Wilson working three jobs. So, Piedmont brought the six finalists together and told them, Oprah-style: You all win!
When WSLS interviewed Wilson about the gift, she got teary-eyed, standing in the parking lot, masked, discussing the doctor’s generosity. And for the last time, one could see Whitney’s glasses fog up.
