Don’t prolong COVID by pretending it’s over

Hi! Hi! Hello? (taps the microphone) Is that on? Can you hear me behind? Prepare?

NOT OVER YET.

There were more than 65,000 cases of COVID-19 reported on Friday, and almost 60,000 cases reported on Saturday. The seven-day average for infections is 56,348, with a national total soon reaching 30 million. Nearly 1,000 people die each day and more than 542,000 have already died. All of these numbers are incredibly terrible. Not over yet. Not even close to that.

Cases have increased in 21 states, most significantly in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and Michigan. Overtaking it all is Florida, where scenes of beaches, bars and streets full of unmasked Spring Break revelers are an aggressive counterpoint to split-screen TV experts pleading with viewers to locate a molecule of responsibility. Most of these partygoers are not from Florida, and when they return home, at least some are sure to take COVID with them wherever they go.

Cognitive dissonance is also abundant in Michigan. The state recorded an additional 2,660 new cases and 47 more deaths by Friday, an increase that momentarily leads the national bloc. Several regions of the state have been moved back to the highest risk measurement level. “We may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we are still in the tunnel,” said Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Friday. “The only way out is to go ahead and do it together.”

An odd statement, as it was Governor Whitmer who the same day announced that Michigan’s stadiums and arenas could start allowing people to enter as of Monday (albeit at 20% capacity). For a state that is at the highest risk level in many places, with infections and deaths on the rise, the cognitive dissonance of Whitmer’s warning in combination with his stadium / arena decision is disconcerting. Unfortunately, Whitmer is not alone.

“The concern is that, across the country, there are a number of states, cities and regions that are backing off on some of the mitigation methods we’re talking about: the removal of mask mandates, the retreat to essentially no public health measures being implemented, ”said COVID expert Anthony Fauci in an interview on Friday. “So it is unfortunate, but not surprising to me, that you are seeing increases in the number of cases per day in areas – cities, states or regions – although vaccines are being distributed at a fairly good rate of 2 to 3 million per day . This could be overcome if certain areas retreated prematurely in the mitigation and public health measures that we are all talking about. “

It has been a year since COVID-19, and there are still leaders who refuse to see this situation as it is: 1 to 0. Either we manage it well or we don’t. It is not 1.1, a bit of giving and receiving because we are tired of restrictions. COVID proved every day that he would take that 0.1 and spill us with it, and it’s happening again.

In addition to the basic fact of saving lives and protecting health, the need to articulate and crush this thing is urgent because of what happens when we don’t: variants. An unchecked virus like this, with permission to reproduce and reproduce, will eventually mutate, and mutate again, until it becomes something that our science has yet to see. This is already happening.

“The highly contagious variant first identified in the UK is probably responsible for up to 30% of Covid infections in the United States. Health officials say the variant may become dominant, ”he says. CNBC. “The variant is seen as the cause of the third wave of coronaviruses in Europe. Several countries, including France and Italy, have imposed new blocking measures to mitigate the spread of the virus as the number of cases increases ”.

So far, vaccines have proven to be effective against variants, according to experts like Fauci. CNN reports that, in relation to the UK variant, “vaccines appear to protect well against B.1.1.7 and treatments like monoclonal antibodies also appear to work against this particular variant, said Fauci. That makes it more important than ever to get people vaccinated quickly, he said. “

If we miss the vaccination race with COVID, however, these vaccines can become little more than flasks of running water in the fight against an attack of highly contagious and lethal variants. To a large extent, the violent neglect of the previous administration has already put us in a place where the variants took place. Preventing more people from becoming active is one of our most important tasks as a species at the moment.

The task is daunting, because it is not just COVID in the United States that we must face. Two well-known variants have already emerged from the UK and South Africa, and Brazil has become a horrible Petri dish for more, including a relentless variant designated as P1.

“Brazil is experiencing a historic collapse of its health service, as intensive care units in hospitals are out of capacity, warned its main health institute, Fiocruz”, reports the BBC. “Covid-19 units in all, except two of the 27 Brazilian states, have a capacity equal to or greater than 80%, according to Fiocruz. In Rio Grande do Sul there are no intensive care beds available. The warning came while the country recorded its highest number of daily deaths, with 2,841 deaths in 24 hours…. The latest increase in cases was attributed to the spread of highly contagious variants of the virus.“(Emphasis added.)

“WATCH,” comes the Twitter alert from the famous epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding. “There is a crisis that we all need to pay attention to – and this crisis is unprecedented in Brazil P1 variant, overburdened hospitals and a marked increase in mortality. If more contagious P1 out of control around the world, we are all threatened. “

The P1, first discovered in Brazil, is much more contagious than the original COVID-19. According Forbes, “To date, at least 48 cases of the variant have been reported in more than 16 states, and it is now present in at least 25 other countries. ”P1 is present in Florida, alongside all those Spring Breakers, and most recently was found by Monte. Sinai Hospital in New York. The New York patient is a Brooklyn resident with no travel history.

This is the last thing people want to hear right now, but it is the truth and it must be spoken at high volume from all sides: we must stay the course.

Now, when the sun is coming back and the vaccines are flying. Now, while your head is full of wind and straw from this year’s desolation. Now, although her children are climbing the walls and gnawing on the furniture. Now it’s the hardest part, because of all this and because it’s not over yet.

We shouldn’t just stick to COVID’s boring self-defense business in all its oppressive forms. We as a nation must become an ambassador for these vaccines. We must donate them by the millions to other nations, especially to those who suffer from severe afflictions, as soon as we can. If we don’t, nations like Brazil, the UK, South Africa and others will continue to introduce COVID variants into the global turmoil, and we may end up returning to the starting point, but with a million dead to contemplate in the obsidian darkness of another long winter. .

Please do not choose this destination.