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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Is Sliding Into the Long Pandemic Defeat
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Jonathan Lemire
@JonLemire
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And uncontrolled infections are a gift to the virus, which keeps birthing new variants that could prolong the current level of crisis or send it spiraling back into a greater level of disruption
theatlantic.com
America Is Sliding Into the Long Pandemic Defeat
In the face of government inaction, the countrys best chance at keeping the crisis from spiraling relies on everyone to keep caring.
11:42 PM · Jun 27, 2022
Jonathan Lemire
@JonLemire
·
Follow
And uncontrolled infections are a gift to the virus, which keeps birthing new variants that could prolong the current level of crisis or send it spiraling back into a greater level of disruption
theatlantic.com
America Is Sliding Into the Long Pandemic Defeat
In the face of government inaction, the countrys best chance at keeping the crisis from spiraling relies on everyone to keep caring.
11:42 PM · Jun 27, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/06/pandemic-protections/661378/
No paywall
https://archive.ph/EobbQ
in 2018, while reporting on pandemic preparedness in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I heard many people joking about the fictional 15th article of the countrys constitution: Débrouillez-vous, or Figure it out yourself. It was a droll and weary acknowledgment that the government wont save you, and you must make do with the resources youve got. The United States is now firmly in the débrouillez-vous era of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Across the country, almost all government efforts to curtail the coronavirus have evaporated. Mask mandates have been lifted on public transit. Conservative lawmakers have hamstrung what public-health departments can do in emergencies. COVID funding remains stalled in Congress, jeopardizing supplies of tests, treatments, and vaccines. The White House and the CDC have framed COVID as a problem for individuals to act uponbut action is hard when cases and hospitalizations are underestimated, many testing sites have closed, and rose-tinted CDC guidelines downplay the coronaviruss unchecked spread. Many policy makers have moved on: Were heading into the midterms, and I think theres a real desire to show confidence that theyve solved this, Céline Gounder, an infectious-disease specialist and the editor at large for public health at Kaiser Health News, told me.
But COVID is far from solved. The coronavirus is still mutating. Even at one of the lowest death rates of the pandemic, it still claims the lives of hundreds of Americans daily, killing more than twice as many people as die, on average, in car accidents. Its costs are still disproportionately borne by millions of long-haulers; immunocompromised people; workers who still face unsafe working conditions; and Black, Latino, and Indigenous Americans, who are still dying at higher rates than white Americans. When Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an epidemiologist and physician at UC San Francisco, works with low-income, Black, and Latino communities in the Bay Area, their concerns are less about returning to normal and more about how to keep themselves safe, she told me. Take it from a tuberculosis activist that you can lose political will, public attention, and scientific momentum and still have a disease that kills over a million people each year, Mike Frick of the Treatment Action Group told me. Were seeing the TB-ification of COVID start.
For any disease, there is a moral case against neglecting those who are most vulnerable; for COVID, theres also still a self-interested case for even the privileged and powerful to resist the pull of neglect. For more than a year, the U.S. has focused on using vaccines and drugs to avert severe disease and death, while deprioritizing other means of preventing infections, such as masks and ventilation. To a degree, this strategy is working: Cases and hospitalizations recently spiked again, while ICU admissions rose gently and deaths have remained stable. And yet, infections still matter, and are affecting all of American society, including the vaxxed-and-done. The coronavirus periodically takes waves of educators and health-care workers out of action; the entire health-care system is now perpetually overburdened and unable to provide its former standard of care. People are still being disabled by long COVID, often without ever landing in the hospital. And uncontrolled infections are a gift to the virus, which keeps birthing new variants that could prolong the current level of crisis or send it spiraling back into a greater level of disruption.
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America Is Sliding Into the Long Pandemic Defeat (Original Post)
Nevilledog
Jun 2022
OP
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)1. Went to Krogers yesterday
Not 1 person other than me had a mask on, including the store manager, who was bagging groceries. Not a single person, and it was crowded!
Stay safe!
Response to SheltieLover (Reply #1)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
speak easy
(9,097 posts)2. SARS-CoV-2 evolves as rapidly as the 'flu.
It is going to be with us forever.