Stop Treating the Pandemic Like It's Over

We're in a full-blown third, fourth or even fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, but nobody seems to have noticed.

That's not strictly true: people are noticing that cases are rising in the US, and that the Delta variant is becoming the dominant strain of the coronavirus (if it hasn't already), but they're sitting there blaming it exclusively on people who haven't gotten vaccinated. By people, I mean pundits and random people on Twitter - hardly a day goes by when I don't see someone on there yelling at us all to get vaccinated (I have, thanks), or being derisive about unvaccinated people being hospitalized.

I find this tone worrying. As I said, I'm vaccinated, and I'm pleased that I got it so soon after it became available in my age group. I believe that the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all got it, we'd be seeing fewer cases. I also think that those who are peddling misinformation, be it about the existence of the pandemic or the efficacy of masking or who are making baseless claims about the safety of the vaccines, are wrong.

Recently, though, I've been finding a weird equivalency between those of us who continue to wear masks and those who refuse to get vaccinated. Speaking to some neighbors the other week, outside and double-masked, I was asked if I hadn't been vaccinated. I answered that I had, but the question rattled me a little. It shouldn't be controversial for me to continue wearing a mask, and it's not the horrible imposition that some, like Tucker Carlson, seem to think it is.

Even Bill Maher (whom my girlfriend loves but I frequently find infuriating) has laughed at people who were still wearing masks outdoors, despite the fact that he got infected with Covid after being vaccinated. If anybody should appreciate the importance of continuing to take precautions, it's him - but I digress.

The fact is that California saw around 44,000 new cases last week. This article from the New York Times says that one in five new cases are in Florida, with appropriate doses of condescension for a Republican-led state, but it doesn't so much as mention California, which by this math accounts for over 10% of new cases. There are pockets of vaccine hesitancy here, which are frequently caused by politics, but it can't be the whole story.

There have to be more Covid breakthrough infections than we're hearing about - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself admits that it's no longer tracking all breakthrough cases. This other article from the NYT notes that the more people you're around, even if you and they are all vaccinated, the greater your risk of encountering a viral load big enough to get you sick.

Some places are taking appropriate steps. I'm staying with my girlfriend at the moment, and the grocery/deli near her house has gone back to requiring masks indoors for all customers. When we went up to a mall in San Francisco a few weeks ago, the vast majority of people outside (we didn't go in) were wearing masks despite notices from the mall itself saying that vaccinated people didn't have to wear masks indoors.

I just think it's too early to start opening up again, and to start telling people they don't have to wear masks. More importantly, I think it's unwise to imply that the vaccine is the only thing that can save us from this pandemic, when wearing a mask is probably as important a step as getting the jab. There's still debate on the relative effectiveness of masks versus vaccines, but I think the point is, if you can do both, do both.

To sum up, if cases are rising in the US (and they are), then don't blame it exclusively on people who haven't been vaccinated. They might not be able to get it, for example because they're allergic, or they might not have gotten around to it yet. Even if they can get it, but are hesitant, telling them they're stupid and selfish is unlikely to convince them otherwise. And even with the vaccine, we shouldn't be declaring victory just yet - we may not want to admit it, but there's a long way to go to eradicate Covid completely, which should have been our goal in the first place.