The Covid scenario looks much better today than it did a year ago. But that doesn’t mean all is well, especially for other people like me who are still “high risk. “
CDC is telling other high-risk people what steps they can take to protect themselves from COVID-19. Protect ourselves. And the few pieces of equipment we have are stigmatized, damaged or removed. Even in peak productive circumstances, other high-risk people like me cannot fully protect themselves from Covid-19. The maximum productivity we can do is to lessen our dangers a bit and hope that the existing promising trends continue.
“High risk” includes other people like me, who, due to chronic respiratory disorders and other physical disabilities, would likely have more difficulty with covid, even if they were fully vaccinated and strengthened. Many of us ask, “Where are we with Covid?And what else, if anything, are we and our fellow citizens in all likelihood asking others to do to keep our dangers as low as possible?
And it’s worth remembering that the pandemic is still ongoing. Current positive trends are not guaranteed to last. Most likely, prolonged covid will continue to generate all kinds of non-public and social domino effects in the future. In addition, our belief of what is an adequate or low point of the threat of Covid and its effect can still be very unbalanced. Infection, hospitalization and mortality rates are nowhere near what they were right now last year. But a significant number of other people still die each and every one. Covid day in the United States.
According to the New York Times of January 26, 2023, page of Coronavirus in the United States, “the average number of deaths reported each day remained at 500 or more for the January high,” a figure that is “nearly double the number of daily deaths. “I usually noticed a bad flu season. “
Is there anything else that can be done now for other high-risk seniors, other people with disabilities, and those chronically ill with Covid-19 or other harmful infectious diseases?
Unfortunately, people’s responses to this seem to depend on politics, their own physical prestige, and whether they are:
There are miles of complex territory between “The pandemic is over” and “The government is covering up an ongoing calamity”, between “People with disabilities and chronically have irrational fear” and “Current Covid policies are eugenics in action”.
Whatever our position, our questions are valid. And what else can public fitness officials, policymakers, and all of us do to continue fighting covid-19 and other infectious diseases?There are probably dozens of things we can and deserve to take. Here are 4 pretty modest steps that would be helpful for high-risk Americans right now.
Make network infection rates the primary measures shared with the public again. CDC’s “network threat level” maps can now be used for hospital and local government planning purposes. But they are misleading to others who need to assess their private threat. .
The challenge is that “community threat level” ratings are strongly influenced by hospitalizations and mortality rates, but obviously do not show infection rates. These maps provide useful data for public fitness planners. but not how much Covid is spreading.
A larger resource can be discovered on the U. S. COVID tracking site. “U. S. ” COVID Act Now”. It also prominently features CDC’s “Community Risk Level” map. Americans can use it to assess their private risk. And there are infection and death rate maps on CNN that offer a faster graphical picture of Covid intensity across the state and county.
The CDC can do a much bigger job by providing Covid maps designed to be a threat assessment team for individuals, not just public fitness planners. we that our local threat of Covid is ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘higher’.
It would be much less difficult for other high-risk people to know when we can relax about Covid if we had an idea of infection rates to look for. Most of us, but in fact not all, are already meeting with family and friends. close friends. We can wear a mask inside, ask others to do the same, check ourselves, and ask others to check before we see them. Most of us are not close to “locking ourselves in. “But how do you know when it’s realistic?wait in a doctor’s office, eat at a restaurant or paint in a crowded office, without putting on a mask or taking other precautions?
Each of us will have our own definition of “insurance. “But it might help to have a conservative but moderate local infection rate under which most people, adding maximum medical vulnerability, deserve to be able to forgo maximum precautions in peak situations. For example, they deserve us to be comfortable with a daily rate of 10 instances or less consistent with 100,000?Or do those at the top of the threat deserve to expect rates closer to five consistent with 100,000 or less?
We all have the ability to set our own arbitrary thresholds. “Above this weekly infection rate, I will wear a mask inside; underneath, I won’t. “But it would be great to have at least some medical and clinical advice, tailored in particular to high-risk people, on when we can really relax. It would also be helpful to have some kind of credibility with schools and employers, when our concepts about what’s safe and what’s not clash. It is not enough to continue advising “talk to our doctors”. Many of our doctors don’t know what to tell us. They also want more advice.
While it’s primarily up to us to assess our own risks, we want more equipment to measure them.
One of the favorite arguments of Covid skeptics about the pandemic was the concept that the virus wasn’t much worse than seasonal flu or other physical dangers we’re all used to. They were wrong. Covid was and still is more widespread and is more harmful than the flu and many other causes of severe illness and death. But it has been difficult to find clear information to prove it.
This would help create and disseminate an accurate and easily readable picture comparing Covid illness, hospitalization and mortality rates, along with seasonal flu and other infectious diseases. It can also be helpful to have simple graphs showing the five most sensitive reasons for hospitalization or death. in a given period of time.
Whether the pandemic is over or not, now or two years from now, other people less tolerant of infectious diseases can use updated threat degrees and comparisons between other diseases and other causes of death. If we are to have a balanced sense of proportions about Covid or any other disease, they give us the knowledge we want to “put things in perspective”.
These are not the only changes we need, nor are they the most important. There are more complex, durable and effective innovations to work with, such as updated vaccines and more efficient ventilation and air filtration in buildings.
But if other high-risk people, and everyone else, are going to stay around primarily to protect themselves, then at least we have a bigger team to do so.