Covid: Still Bad

But no, it's not March 2020.

We are now almost two years in to the Covid-19 pandemic, and thanks to a combination of vaccine refusal and vaccine hoarding, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get to the other side of this thing any time soon. It feels like Omicron is taking over the world — here in New York, it feels like everyone I know is testing positive for Covid. As the holidays approach, many of us are again exercising extra caution, forgoing indoor dining, get-togethers, and unnecessary activities.

Elsewhere, though, too many people are going on like everything is normal while the body count continues to tick up. It is, to my eternal rage, people who are unvaccinated and unboosted (and who also tend to be Republican) who are not only refusing vaccination, but are also insisting on living life as normal — as if there wasn’t still a deadly disease killing, mostly, people like them, and also those vulnerable to disease.

Still others are comparing this moment to March 2020, and demanding that we behave like it’s March 2020 — before we had vaccines, when we had far less information about this disease, and when we were doing all sorts of unhelpful and mostly-useless measures in the name of stopping the spread. New York City schools are case in point: There are all kinds of ridiculous rules in place for kids, including, in some schools, no lockers (even though Covid isn’t largely spread by touching surfaces), recesses that are masked and distanced despite being outside, lunch at ridiculous times and while sitting on the floor to maintain distance, and no access to water fountains.

It’s a strange push-pull to feel like you’re in the middle of: Frustration with many people who largely share your politics but seem to abandon “follow the science” and “risk reduction is preferable to preaching abstinence” when it comes to Covid safety protocols, preferring the most conservative means possible even when there’s little connection between action and risk; and total despair and rage at many who don’t share your politics, never followed the science to begin with, and whose actions have effectively hurled us into our new reality of Covid Forever.

What’s clear to me at this point is that we are going to be living with Covid for the foreseeable future. It’s far, far beyond time to institute common-sense preventative measures, including vaccine mandates for all inessential indoor activities (dining, entertainment) and mask mandates for essential indoor activities (grocery shopping, riding public transport). New York City does this, as do many European countries, and while it’s obviously not a perfect preventative measure, it’s a pretty effective way to maximize personal freedoms and pleasure while minimizing risk. I feel genuinely badly for folks in places where it’s a total free-for-all — there’s really no way to return to anything resembling normal in the era of an air-transmitted disease as long as you never have any control over who you might be sharing air with.

Anti-vaccine and anti-mask people — a group that is largely Republican — need to get it together, and at this point, I’m really not sure what to do. Liberal Americans are overwhelmingly vaccinated. The problem is a lack of mandates, and Republican electeds who have made it impossible for businesses and organizations to impose their own basic health rules when the state fails to. Red states, and Republican voters, are failing us.

But there’s a lot progressive places could be doing differently, too. Every a city should have a vaccine mandate to work with the public or do just about anything fun, and require masks in essential indoor spaces.

But beyond that, it’s also time for progressive places and people to consider not just immediate safety concerns, but how we’re balancing the risk of various Covid variants with the need to live — to connect with other people, to learn, to experience joy and pleasure and novelty again. Covid is not the only threat to our well-being. It is not March 2020 — vaccines are here, boosters are widely available, and being vaxxed and boosted makes the chance of getting seriously ill from Covid very small for most people. And while we should all use the tools available to protect everyone, and while every authority from the state to private employers should mandate measures to protect the public health, I’m not sure that “no freedom til Zero Covid” is sensible.

We know that loneliness kills. We know that the knock-on effects of Covid shutdowns have been devastating, but often harder to track. Drug overdoses are at record highs. Around the world, devastated economies, shutdowns, and aid dollars directed away from other health needs and toward Covid seem almost guaranteed to lead to higher rates of death, malnutrition, stunting, alcoholism, and a sea of other ills. We keep hearing that kids are “resilient,” but no one can be resilient forever — and lots of kids, like lots of adults, actually aren’t all that resilient, and are going to be suffering from school closures, online learning, and the attendant learning losses for the rest of their lives. And there are social costs, too. Trust breaks down when we don’t speak to our neighbors, when we see others as potential disease vectors, when we can’t see each others’ facial expressions, and when we move through our lives in a state of maximal anxiety and suspicion and hostility.

It’s been striking to see how many Zero Covid people have totally pushed aside public health concerns other than Covid infection. Twitter is very much not real life, but the Twitter discourse is tremendously influential on journalists and media-makers, who are in turn tremendously influential on the general public. And there is a particular strain of Covid Twitter obsessive who I suspect derives a sense of great purpose and esteem from being The Safest, and who perhaps were already predisposed to social anxiety and agoraphobia. Those impulses — to shut oneself in, to panic — are understandably given into during a pandemic. But I’m not sure they should be quite so influential on how we fight this thing.

The US has been in the throes of a mass casualty event. But it is not March 2020. Most Covid deaths happened pre-vaccine. Most deaths and hospitalizations happening now are of the unvaccinated, and to a lesser degree the unboosted. We have many more preventative tools at our disposal. We have much more information than we did two years ago. And we should begin to understand Covid the same way we do other risks, from the flu to driving a car: there has to be a balance between protecting public safety and letting people live their lives.

As we enter yet another period of Covid spiking, it’s worth assessing our own vulnerable points and our own risk-taking, and consider being a bit more conservative in the short term (I’ve begged off of various holiday parties, for example, and I’m glad I did). In the longer term, though, those of us who are being reasonable about this whole thing (that is, those of us who are vaxxed, boosted, and careful) should consider how we want to live assuming we are going to be living beside this thing for the foreseeable future. What are we doing because it gives us the feeling of control rather than aligning with proven best practices? Where are we being too swift to give up much of what’s necessary for a good life — human connection, novelty, art, risk, pleasure — in the name of safety? Where are we being too soft on our elected leaders, who we need to lead but who are instead largely relying on the individual decisions of millions of Americans, roughly a third of whom are total yahoos?

This latest spike is scary, and the not-totally-irresponsible among us will respond accordingly. But at some point, we’re going to have to break the pattern of panic / react / relax. That doesn’t mean “getting back to normal life.” But it does mean intentionally creating a new normal instead of just falling into one.

xx Jill

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Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash