Why You Need to Stop Assuming We’re All Getting COVID
When the COVID-19 pandemic first began, in late 2019 – early 2020, there was a thought that perhaps we could contain it – isolate patients, trace their contacts and quarantine them, and the disease will not disappear. be able to spread. In the past, other new diseases have disappeared, such as SARS, the cousin of COVID. There was good reason to hope that most of us would never smell the coronavirus.
But that did not happen. There were too many gaps in this regard – including the fact that COVID could spread before a person showed symptoms that no one knew about at the time – and it seems safe to assume that the new coronavirus is not going anywhere. At the beginning of 2020, it was already clear that we cannot eradicate this virus; we had to assume that everyone will sooner or later face it.
Exposure does not mean that everyone will personally contract the virus.
There are also people who say that we must all be prepared to be infected with COVID, which is simply unrealistic. The Orange County registry, for example, published an article titled “Vaccinated or Not Vaccinated, but According to Many Experts, Anyone Can Get COVID-19 at some point.” But only one in six experts they interviewed said something similar. Everyone agreed that we must be prepared to be infected with the virus, but must not accept it.
The vaccine (mostly) works
Remember, we have three good vaccines in the US, and there are several other effective vaccines in use around the world. It will take more time, work and data to vaccinate everyone, but it’s important to note that vaccines work . Even with Delta circulating, all three of our vaccines are more than 70% effective against symptomatic infection, and over 90% effective against hospitalization and death, according to this recent Yale Medicine data summary .
A defeatist attitude will lead to loss of life
Remember when it was optimistically said that perhaps we all contracted COVID in the winter of 2019 and everything is fine? Do you know how people still say that they are not worried about a virus with a “99%” survival rate? Not only are survival rates not rosy , but the spread of the virus has already killed 700,000 Americans , or roughly 1 in every 500 of us. Many more people are living with long periods of COVID, another disease that can be prevented with a vaccine .
Often, the thought that “we will all get COVID” is an excuse for not taking precautions. If we can do it anyway, why bother with masks? Why get vaccinated? But we know that masks work to reduce transmission, and vaccines work to save lives and reduce transmission (because the fewer people get sick, the fewer people can spread the virus).
As a parent, I need people not to give up. My children are still vulnerable to the virus, although I hope they can receive vaccines in the coming months. In the meantime, I don’t want people with defeatist moods to cough all over their bodies. You, too, can protect your loved ones by taking protection from this virus seriously.