There Is A Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Too many unvaccinated Americans are dying from COVID-19, but for the vaccinated things are getting brighter.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
Things Are Looking Up
I have a confession to make. Life is pretty good. In fact, the Summer of 2021 was one of the best I’ve had in a very long time.
In March, on the day before my birthday, I got vaccinated against COVID-19. I had my second shot in April and since life has slowly returned to normal. I took fantastic vacations this summer, including an amazing trip to California, Nevada, and Arizona with my youngest. In August, I spent a week in Cape Cod with my mother, brother, niece, and an old friend. In September I traveled to Michigan for a sports weekend for the ages! I attend concerts, eat at restaurants, get drinks at bars, and go to museums. My kids are back in school and even though they aren’t vaccinated I’m not worried about them getting sick. They see their friends, attend sleepovers, and do nearly all the fun activities they did before the pandemic. It’s wonderful and makes me think that they will come out of this experience no worse off than they were before.
While I’m fully aware that COVID-19 continues to take far too many lives, the pandemic no longer affects my life nearly the same way it did six months ago — and that’s primarily because I am vaccinated. Of course, I still wear a mask when required to do so, which in my neighborhood is most places. Sometimes I wear it when not required, just to be on the safe side. But otherwise, life is beginning to feel like it was before the pandemic. Moreover, I find myself approaching life in a very different way than I did before March 2020: avoiding stressful situations, focusing on happiness, and doing the things in life that give me the greatest pleasure.
I bring all this up because it’s essential to recognize that we’ve made extraordinary progress against COVID-19 — and it shouldn’t go unrecognized.
High Anxiety
Last month the New York Times ran an op-ed and photo essay by a woman who lives in the city’s Lower East Side that speaks to a very different set of emotions.
I’m a native New Yorker. I’m a staunch feminist. And I grew up playing bass in punk bands on the Lower East Side.
Those are three ways of telling you that I’m not generally a person ruled by fear, or someone who automatically does what she’s told.
So when Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the start of the summer that the city would be returning to in-person school in September, there wasn’t really a bone in my body that believed I’d soon be dropping off my seventh-grade son, Harper, every morning at his well-intentioned but criminally underfunded Lower East Side public school, with its insufficient ventilation and lack of outdoor space.
And yet here I am, with my sanitized fingers crossed.
I’ve been up since 5:45, thoughts flying around my brain like panicked birds crashing into one another for over an hour.
What if my son gets Covid and becomes a long hauler?
What if he brings it home to my husband, who has a heart disease?
A mom friend recently said: “I’d feel better just sending my son down the East River on an inner-tube and seeing what he can learn. At least he’d be outside.” And for a split second I thought, “I own an inner-tube!”
I empathize with those still living in deathly fear of COVID, even though they are vaccinated, and even those who live in a city where cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are remarkably low. I understand that everyone has experienced the pandemic in their own unique way. But I also worry that the embracing of worst-case scenarios is having a dangerous effect and convincing people that our choices are more limited and our health is in greater danger than the reality of the situation.
For the first time in weeks, COVID cases are finally declining, and vaccinations are increasing. President Biden’s decision to mandate vaccines for federal workers and the military and the corresponding moves by private employers and state governments is moving the needle in the right direction.
And we now have even more evidence that getting vaccinated is the surest way to protect ourselves from getting sick. According to a CDC report issued last month, those who still refuse to get the shot are five times more likely to get infected and ten times more likely to be hospitalized or die. COVID today is overwhelmingly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Moreover, the vaccinated (and over the age of 12, that’s close to 76% of Americans) can enjoy our lives in ways unimaginable just a few months ago.
The Kids Are Alright
One recurrent refrain that you hear from the anxious vaccinated is that their kids are still susceptible to illness. Even though there are regular reports of kids getting sick from the Delta variant, it’s still incredibly rare. It’s even rarer for kids to be seriously ill or die.
A September report by the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that a million kids had contracted COVID-19 in a four-week period. Without context, these numbers appear daunting, but the reality is that hospitalization rates for kids hover somewhere between 0.1% and 2%. Deaths are even rarer. As of early September, 5.5 million kids had tested positive for COVID — only 561 have died. That’s approximately .01 percent. This likely understates the actual numbers. Since kids are generally asymptomatic — and because of the absence of available testing in the first few months of the pandemic — many more kids likely had COVID and never knew. One of the reasons we’re seeing a higher percentage of kids testing positive is that a) more kids are getting tested and b) since so many adults are vaccinated and thus safe from getting sick, kids are making up a higher percentage of the overall number of positive cases. Nonetheless, there’s little evidence that children are in greater danger from the Delta variant than they were in the past.
Across the country, schools have reopened, and it hasn’t led to a spike in cases. For example, in New York, no schools this year have been closed because of COVID. Obviously, the situation can change, but it’s worthy of note that one of the worst recent fears about the pandemic — that reopening schools would lead to new illnesses — has not materialized. And we may only be a few weeks away from those under the age of 12 becoming vaccine-eligible.
The author of the piece above doesn’t say if her son is vaccinated, though most 7th graders in New York are eligible to get the vaccine. But if he is vaccinated, her fears are even more exaggerated.
Breakthrough cases among the vaccinated are extremely unlikely, and if they do occur, they are rarely severe. Indeed, for all its missteps during the pandemic, the CDC’s release of a report this summer about a spike in cases in Provincetown, Massachusetts, stands out as one of the agency’s most significant errors. The report, and the coverage it received, propagated the widespread and incorrect notion that the vaccinated are just as able to spread the virus as the unvaccinated. In reality, the vaccinated are less likely to get infected overall, and if they do get sick, likely to be contagious for a shorter time.
There Is A Brighter Side
And yet, people remain afraid. Indeed, I found it somewhat irresponsible that the Times even published the above piece. The fears expressed, divorced from an actual threat, will only enable catastrophizing, making it difficult for so many to return to pre-COVID normalcy.
Again, I empathize with those who are still so anxious about COVID. Some are immunocompromised or have friends and family that are more susceptible to illness. If I lived in a red state like Mississippi or Alabama, where hospitals have been overrun, and thousands are dying needlessly, I don’t think I’d be as sanguine about the situation. Moreover, it’s heartbreaking to read story after story about people begging for the vaccine as they are about to be intubated or parents leaving behind children because they didn’t get the shot. It’s unbearably frustrating that there are Republican governors tenaciously fighting to prevent mask mandates and protesting vaccine requirements that have the power to save lives. It’s so easy to become angry and depressed by this constant drumbeat of tragedies. I get it. I do.
But, the fact is that if you’re vaccinated, you are overwhelmingly safe. You are at little risk of illness — and if you do get sick, the vaccine will protect you from a worse outcome. Your kids are safe as well. Eighteen months ago, we were stuck at home, unable to see friends and family. Millions were out of work. Eating in restaurants, drinking in bars, traveling, attending concerts, movies, or plays l were all out of the question. Worst of all, none of us could be sure that the tickle in the back of our throat or a sudden cough and shortness of breath didn’t mean we’d end up on a ventilator in an overcrowded hospital, unable to be comforted by our friends and family. The vaccines not only allowed us to return to normal and engage in the activities that bring us happiness, but they removed the fear of sickness and death.
I know it’s sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees or that the stress of the past 18 months has accumulated in a way that makes it difficult to accept the idea of normalcy. I even understand the temptation to catastrophize and view the world around us in such negative terms. We’ve all been through an extraordinarily traumatic event that few of us have been able to process fully. It’s completely natural to be afraid. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me that I’m not more traumatized! Maybe, I’m being too rational. But it’s simply true that we are far closer to the end of COVID than the beginning. We can enjoy our lives again. It’s an extraordinary gift. Let’s do it.
I think it likely that a significant segment of the population (not a majority, but significant) will remain hesitant about going back out to large gatherings, restaurants, sporting events, etc. It's so easy now to shop for a large percent of our needs/wants from our easy chair, and the uptick in violence (or the uptick in reported violence - or both) will delay a full return to "normalcy" for many. I'm probably one of them - although I've always been a bit of a hermit, so it might not be noticeable to any but my family. They just laugh at me.
I recently received my Pfizer booster and had no reaction to the injection at all. I urge everyone who is eligible to get the booster ASAP and if you haven’t been vaccinated, get the jab. The only thing I am suffering from is compassion fatigue. I no longer care about anti-vaxxers dying, only about the children who are left behind with the legacy of parents dying because of stupidity. Does that make me a bad person? Perhaps, but I am sick of the media glorifying the ignorant using terms like “vaccine hesitant”. They sure aren’t hesitant to take up needed space in hospitals when their stupidity forces them to the ICU. The unvaccinated, unless truly for a medical condition, should be last in line for emergency care. It was nice reading about your return to normalcy; I’m looking forward to returning to “normal” whatever that will be like in Texas.