A particularly insufferable argument from today’s New York Times:
Millions of Americans with weakened immune systems, disabilities or illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus have lived this way since March 2020, sequestering at home, keeping their children out of school and skipping medical care rather than risk exposure to the virus. And they have seethed over talk from politicians and public health experts that they perceive as minimizing the value of their lives.
As Year 3 of the pandemic approaches, with public support for precautions plummeting and governors of even the most liberal states moving to shed mask mandates, they find themselves coping with exhaustion and grief, rooted in the sense that their neighbors and leaders are willing to accept them as collateral damage in a return to normalcy.
Oh, horse pucky. No one sees the death of cancer patients or anyone else who is immunocompromised as acceptable “collateral damage,” just as Georgia reopening barber shops wasn’t “an experiment in human sacrifice.” Those who are immunocompromised lived with a greater level of risk to their lives before the Covid-19 pandemic, and they will live with a greater level of risk to their lives as the Covid-19 pandemic winds down and the virus becomes endemic. That is a harsh and unfair reality, but no legislation, regulation, or public policy decision is going to change the fact that if you do not have a healthy immune system, you have a higher risk of serious health consequences from any pathogen you encounter.
If every last microbe of SARS-CoV-2 disappeared tomorrow, immunocompromised Americans would still have to be careful and try to minimize their chances of catching the flu, the common cold, or bacterial infections. We have a much better chance of mitigating the worst outcomes for the immunocompromised through better medication and treatment options than by expecting Americans to alter their daily behavior indefinitely.
It is doubtful that any society can be truly safe for the immunocompromised, but it is impossible to have an open society and one that is safe for the immunocompromised. Human beings require interaction with others. Interaction with others – even with mask mandates in place! – inevitably spreads viruses, germs, bacteria, etc. Everyone is going to have to step into post-pandemic life with a clear sense of their own tolerance for risk. If you’re immunocompromised, you are going to want to avoid crowds and wash your hands frequently. (This was the advice from before Covid-19 pandemic!) In many circumstances, the immunocompromised will want to wear a mask. (And this is why, no matter you may hate wearing a mask yourself, you should never give somebody else grief about choosing to wear one. You never know what health issue a person or their loved ones are privately enduring.)
But it is unreasonable to expect everyone else in society to wear masks or social distance indefinitely, and no one is being callous or uncaring for wanting to get back to pre-pandemic habits of going to large events or on planes unmasked and just enjoying their lives.
I know somebody who’s immunocompromised right now. That means before I’m around them, I’m going to have to be more careful, monitoring myself for any signs of sickness, and yes, for a few days before I visit them, I wear masks when I’m out shopping, etc.. It stinks, but it’s something I’m willing to do for someone I care about. But it would be unreasonable to expect everyone else in society to do the same, all the time, indefinitely. The guy in the grocery store produce aisle is not coming over to visit!
The Times article laments, “vaccinating almost everyone would help, she said, but millions of Americans refuse, and not enough funding has been forthcoming for improved ventilation systems in public places.”
Yet we’re pretty close to “vaccinating almost everyone.” As of this morning, 87.6 percent of American adults have at least one shot! Almost 81 percent of everyone eligible has at least one shot! As mentioned in today’s Jolt, “a new model estimates that 73 percent of Americans are, for now, immune to omicron, the dominant variant, and that could rise to 80 percent by mid-March.” And because it can’t be emphasized enough, since early January, Omicron is the pandemic: for the past two weeks, 100 percent of genomically identified cases are Omicron variants.
What does the vaccination rate have to be before someone feels comfortable going out, vaccinated and wearing a mask themselves? Here in Fairfax County, 90.4 percent of adults have at least one shot. What’s the threshold before you feel safe?
Deep in the article, there’s an observation that one of the best ways to help the immunocompromised would be to make treatments for Covid-19 more widely available. Throughout 2021, the Biden administration missed a lot of opportunities to build up stockpiles of a wider variety of treatments.