Covid infections are up by 68%, over the past two weeks, in my county

[Ms. Toad]

56. COVID is not the cold, or a flu.

and we have years of experience with both of those to know that they don't create life-long health impacts.

All we know about COVID is from two years' of experience - and data beyond the criticial stage of the disease is just now being studied. We know that between 25% and 50% of people - even people with mild cases of COVID - have long COVID. Beyond that, for as long as we have been able to measure, people with even mild cases of COVID have an increased risk of cardiac events, and a significant portion have diminished mental capacity, diminished executive functioning, and loss of brain matter. Given what we already know, it is pretty clear that we will learn that there are even more long-term effects yet to be discovered.

Until we have at least a decade of experience with COVID (and preferably longer), we need to continue to focus on disease prevention - not merely on mitigating the damage done by the initial infection.