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| covid is here to stay |
In response to the Omicron variant, the Biden administration has announced plans to distribute 400 million N95 masks to community health centers and pharmacies, limiting it to three masks per person. Furthermore, free at-home rapid antigen tests can now be ordered online, limited to four tests per household (https://www.covidtests.gov/). This begs the question: Why couldn’t anything be done earlier? “By the time the masks and tests get there, the surge will probably be over,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases doctor at the University of California San Francisco. It’s true; new cases due to the Omicron variant have already peaked in San Mateo County. The masks and tests have come too late and will most likely not meaningfully change the course of the Omicron wave. The slow response is due to many factors, the biggest contributing factor being the Biden administration's over-reliance on vaccines. Variants have decreased the efficacy of the vaccine, but the idea that only vaccines would bring an end to the pandemic was premature at best. Omicron itself was also incredibly potent; case numbers were doubling in less than two days at the wave’s peak, much faster than previous variants. In regards to the end of the pandemic, Graham Medley, an infectious-diseases modeler at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said “This will not be the last variant, and so the next variant will have its own characteristics.” It’s likely that COVID-19 will become an endemic disease – meaning it is here to stay, similar to the flu or common cold. The line for what is considered “endemic” is blurry because it depends on what societies consider an acceptable amount of deaths while the population is building up immunity. According to the Nature Journal, that could mean decades until everyone has contracted the disease multiple times and has built up an immunity to be protected from severe infection. Or not, since any models trying to predict the future of COVID-19 are highly variable and can’t predict farther than a few weeks in advance. It’s also not exactly a “natural end” to the pandemic – reaching endemic status means higher proportions of the population developing long COVID and enduring years of deadly waves.
Questions:
- What do you think about the current restrictions on COVID-19 and the mask mandates? Is it excessive or should the government be doing more to curb outbreaks?
- Do you think the free masks and tests will have an effect on the course of the pandemic in the U.S.?
- Will you be taking advantage of the free masks/tests? Why or why not?
3 comments:
I am currently find with the covid-19 mandates and while I do think they are a bit excessive I don't really think its constraining people that much. I think the reality of it is that everyone has broken the mask mandate in some shape or form. Though I do really think that even if all us mess up once and a while we should still at least have guidelines to try to follow. However I do think that gov't attempts are admirable I do think they are in the end futile. It is the unfortunate truth that the pandemic has gone on long enough with too many restrictions that most people really don't care anymore. I think if the gov't tried to place more restrictions people would ignore them or state gov't would challenge it like it has for the entirety of the pandemic. I think the gov't should simply just provide services for those who want or need it and let the others who refuse live their own life as further pushback would just create more friction.
Hey Pascal, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that although most people have “broken” the mask mandate in some shape or form, having some basic guidelines is important to maintain. But even so, it’s debatable how effective the government has been throughout the pandemic, especially given the fact that people have simply ignored mask mandates before. I also agree that trying to force people who don’t care about the pandemic anymore might not be worth the resources it would take to do so and it might be better allocated to those who need those resources.
I think that over the course of the 2 years everyone has become a lot more lax about COVID in general. We have become a lot more normalized to our situation and I think that because so many of us have gone through 2 years of the pandemic without contracting COVID, it was an excuse to go to more gatherings, eat out at restaurants, and go maskless in public. I think the increase in cases as well as the mandates have shown people that there is still a pandemic and that these guidelines are there for protection. During the peak in San Mateo it was so difficult to not only find masks, but testing kits. Almost every drug store in the area that we went to was sold out, and stated that a shipment would be coming in the next few weeks. I mean, hypothetically, by that time, if I had COVID and couldn’t get a test, I probably would have given it to many other people. I think that the free masks and tests would have made the process a lot less stressful and made everyone much safer as well.
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