We have turned a corner with COVID

The question is, which corner?

Did your Facebook page light up over the holidays with reports that friends and acquaintances had tested positive for COVID?  Mine did.  In our little circle of friends out here on the East End, at least four have reported coming down with the disease over the last week.  At the same time, cable news and the papers have been reporting on the recent surge of Omicron that is sweeping the country.  There has been a 105 percent increase in cases since last week.  The surge, while heavy in New York and other East Coast states, is happening all over the country.  

Meanwhile, holiday travel is up over last year at this time, along with delays and cancellations of flights everywhere.  Some 800 flights were canceled yesterday, 1400 were canceled on Sunday, and by 2 p.m. today more than 1000 flights within, into, or out of the United States have been canceled, according to the website Flightaware, which keeps track of airlines’ scheduling problems.  Most of the cancellations are due to the surge in Omicron infections that has affected airline staffing, as well as pockets of snowstorms and other inclement winter weather around the country.

The big story yesterday was the decision by the CDC to reduce the isolation time from ten days to five for people with asymptomatic COVID.  The agency also said that people who have received the recommended two-shot regimen of mRNA vaccine plus a booster do not have to quarantine if exposed to a person carrying the virus, but recommended that they wear a mask around others for at least 10 days.

What’s going on here?  In my non-expert estimation, I see at least four trends in the COVID story: 

One:  We’ve become accustomed to the pandemic in ways that were unimaginable a year ago.  I remember when Tracy and I came down with breakthrough infections in August, it was a major event among our friends and families, not to say to us personally.  Both of us had been double-vaccinated with the Pfizer shot at the time, but we worried from the moment I first came down with a fever that either one or both of us would end up in the hospital.  That didn’t happen, but we went through a very nervous first few days taking our temperatures every four hours and slipping one of those oxi-meters over our forefingers to check our oxygen levels.

Today, hearing that a friend or family member has tested positive isn’t as remarkable, and reports from people we know who have contracted the Omicron variant are that they are either asymptomatic or suffering very mild symptoms.  A report I read today said that many with positive tests don’t even come down with a fever.

Two:  People are going about their lives.  The widespread nature of the current surge, especially given the mild cases that are being reported, has meant a matter-of-factness about the disease that has led to the lessening of restrictions by and around those who are infected.  There have been anecdotal reports of a drop-off in restaurant visits, and in New York, quite a few Broadway shows have gone dark because the disease spread rapidly through cast and crew.  But others are making use of stand-ins and in one case, I read of a director taking a script and reading a role onstage so the show could go on.  But all you have to do is look at the number of travelers during the holidays to see that COVID is being integrated into people’s lives, and routines are returning to normal practically everywhere. 

I have noticed a steep drop-off in the use of the word “pandemic” in reporting about the Omicron variant and the steep increases in cases it has brought.  People, and news organizations, are beginning to realize that COVID is something that we have learned to live with, even in the midst of the largest surge of disease since it first hit back in March of 2020.  COVID hasn’t turned into something as commonplace as the flu, but it’s headed in that direction, and people are beginning to act like it.

Three:  The unvaccinated, while still a significant percentage of the population, are beginning to matter less and less.  According to the US Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker, 63 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, and 74 percent have received at least one dose.  That leaves more than a quarter of the country completely unvaccinated, and it’s a number that isn’t budging much.  Several polls during the fall and winter have revealed that convincing the unvaccinated to join the rest of us is futile.  More than 80 percent of the unvaccinated told CNBC they have no plans to get the shot.  Even as the unvaccinated are showing up in emergency rooms and filling ICU beds during this surge, they don’t appear to be a major factor in spreading the disease to the rest of us.  Everyone I am aware of who has come down with the Omicron variant has been a loyal vaccinated and boosted mask-wearing citizen, and to the extent they can determine how they caught the disease, most believe they may have caught it from someone else who was similarly vaccinated and boosted.

In other words, the unvaccinated are continuing to come down with the disease and die from it, and they are the reason for the surge in hospital admissions and severe cases needing ICU beds and ventilators and other extreme life-saving measures, but that has been the case for months now.  I don’t have facts and figures because I haven’t seen any studies that show this, but it’s becoming clear to me that the unvaccinated are not the big reason everybody else, included those who are vaccinated and boosted, are contracting the disease.  The unvaccinated are walling themselves off in red states and red areas of other states, and while they are a burden on the healthcare system everywhere, they have turned themselves into their own section of the greater COVID story where they will remain until they come to their senses and get the shot or in some cases, die.

Four:  Testing is a big story right now chiefly because we don’t have enough of them.  President Biden has put tests in the news with his plans to distribute 500 million free home-test kits, and Anthony Fauci announced yesterday that the U.S. will have an adequate supply of COVID tests by next month.  Out here on the East End, two testing sites run by East Hampton closed down before Christmas when they ran out of tests, and when they reopened recently, there were long lines at both sites.  Local pharmacies like CVS are completely out of home tests, and it’s difficult to get an appointment for a test at local doctors’ offices.

Now for my own anecdotal experience:  I came down with a fever of about 100 in the middle of last week and ran straight to my doctor to get tested.  The test came back negative, and I’m embarrassed now that I was so quick to be tested because I used up one appointment with my doctor and one PCP test, which apparently are in short supply. 

This might be a little controversial, but I think we’re reaching the point where testing is going to be a diminishing part of the COVID story.  Right now, if you get what seems to be a mild cold or case of the flu, it’s probably a good idea to stay put for five days and wait it out, rather than running off to a pharmacy or doctor’s office for a test.  If you get a lot sicker, it’s a different story.  But everything I’m reading says that thousands are coming down with either very mild breakthrough cases or are sick but completely asymptomatic, and maybe it’s time to just deal with the fact you’re sick and do your five days isolation and move on.

State health systems are already pleading with people who have tested positive with a home test to report their test to the authorities.  When 500 million of the home tests are out there, it’s pretty clear there will be a lot of positive tests that won’t be officially recorded anywhere unless someone gets sick enough to either go to the doctor or an emergency room.  My negative test was reported by my doctor to the state, but if I had taken a home test that was negative, I wouldn’t be part of the statistics for the week that showed a 105 percent increase in coronavirus cases. 

From what I’m reading, it’s evident that this country isn’t going to be able to reach anything even close to so-called herd immunity against COVID because of the large number of citizens who won’t get vaccinated.  The story of COVID isn’t over, but I think we are reaching an immunity of a different kind:  an immunity to the kind of panic that has accompanied the first two years of this disease.  As we enter our third year of dealing with COVID, I think that’s exactly what we’re doing:  we’re dealing with it.  We’re living with the disease, especially those among us who are functioning, rational, responsible citizens.  Those who aren’t in that number are gradually subtracting themselves from what we might call polite society.  They are writing themselves out of the history of this disease by dying, to which I say, Godspeed, folks.  Please shut the door on your way out.