Over the last few years, people have been desperate for the COVID-19 pandemic to be over. The virus completely upended the globe and created the conditions for a collective traumatic event that will take years for us to unpack and understand.
Of course, many people have never acknowledged the serious threat that this virus has posed to public health, despite the death of roughly three-million people worldwide, but even those who did take precautions in 2020 and 2021 slowly began to unmask and revert to pre-COVID behaviors. In full transparency, I was one of them. Despite catching COVID for the first time in 2022, I’ve been lax about masking in public since I started getting yearly vaccinations. In some ways, I believe that the vaccine has been the best and worst thing that’s happened in the past few years because it has saved countless lives while also creating a sense of invulnerability that has endangered countless others.
The belief that getting vaccinated is enough to stay safe from COVID-19 is not something that people have come up with on their own. This is not a problem with individual actors but a continued, systemic failure of our government and the organizations that are meant to keep us safe. Despite the pleas and protests of many disability advocates, there have been major government campaigns to create the belief that the “pandemic is over” and manufacture consent around “getting back to business,” placing profit and politics over public safety.
In May of 2023, the Biden Administration even declared the public health emergency to be over, but this is not true. We are still in a pandemic. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, has recently stated exactly that, citing the virus’s rapid evolution and its lack of seasonal pattern. COVID-19 is a virus that continues to evolve with the risk that one of these future variants could become more transmissible and deadly.
Even if future variants don’t cause more severe illness, the current variants are still plenty harmful. Despite headlines offering the comfort of “fewer severe COVID cases,” the JN.1 variant (which has been the dominant variant as of late) has still ushered in a surge of new infections that resulted in the death of nearly 10,000 people over the holiday season (when social gatherings were frequent) and continues to kill another 1,500 every week.
There is also the risk of long COVID, which is a potential consequence of infection that many seem to underestimate. While the vaccine has been successful at reducing the rate of hospitalization and death, long COVID can cause many serious and disabling effects for those who only experienced mild infections. Some of the possible symptoms of long COVID include fatigue, brain fog, heart palpitations, as well as pain. These symptoms can last for months, if not years, beyond the initial infection. Some people have yet to find relief. Researchers believe one possible explanation for long COVID is the way it disrupts the brain, such as its effects on serotonin levels, but there is still much to be studied. We are in the infancy of understanding the long-term harms of COVID and how to treat them, but many people are suffering in the meantime. For those who are already living with long COVID, waiting for answers can feel unbearable.
Avoiding infection and helping to prevent the spread of COVID is still our best option. With a lack of government response to help warn people of the ongoing threat of the pandemic and put protective measures into place, it falls to individuals and communities to keep each other safe. I understand the resistance to returning to these practices that remind us of the trauma we’ve experienced over the past four years but masking, yearly vaccination, and avoiding large gatherings can be small behaviors that make a huge difference, especially when rates of transmission are high.
There are many things we cannot control about this pandemic but we are not powerless either. We can continue to put the health and safety of ourselves and others first by masking and getting the latest vaccine, as well as pressure our government officials to do better with their response to the virus. The power has always been with the people, and that has proven to be as true during this pandemic as it’s ever been.
Stay safe.