We Will Struggle To De-Covid

 One website I've visited a lot during the pandemic is this one. Covid ACT NOW aggregates a lot of different metrics to see how bad it is in your area. Currently, they rank Connecticut light red. When you look at the metrics, you struggle to see why.

Connecticut has a fairly high number of new cases every day. However, the R0 is low (around 1), the positive test rate suggests that we are simply catching the new cases. This site doesn't tell you if the new cases are symptomatic or not.  Connecticut ICUs are in good shape and almost half the population is vaccinated with at least one dose.

Yet they code CT as being at "Very High Risk."

As of today, I'm two weeks out from my Dos Dose of Pfizer. Theoretically, I should be able to do just about anything I want. Work requires a mask: fine, most of my students are NOT vaccinated. Shopping? Sure, I'll wear a mask. It helps keep everyone on the same page. Especially since we are NOT out of the woods until several tens of millions more Americans get the vaccine

However... we are going out to eat in a restaurant for the first time in a year on Friday. I feel weird about it. I imagine I'm not alone.

It took a great deal of messaging wrapped in fear to get America to (largely) change its behavior last spring. The fear was because we just didn't know a lot about the virus. The current fear is that unchecked spread will create mutations that might evade the vaccines. 

The thing is, at some point, we need to stop being afraid of Covid. That has to be a rational decision. Right now, we need to still fear it, because not enough people are vaccinated/immune and the variants are a real issue. But the day is fast approaching when we should stop living in fear of this virus. 

I don't know how you change that messaging, because people will continue to die or get gravely ill from Covid after we reach herd immunity, just as people get gravely ill or die from the flu every year. The number will never be zero.

It made perfect sense to overreact last spring. It made perfect sense to overreact to the second wave and the holiday wave and to the spring break wave we are having now. But we are going to have to stop overreacting at some point, or the very idea of vaccines and public health will be discredited.

I just saw that the band Dawes is touring this fall. I'd like to go, but it's going to take a while for me to get comfortable in crowds again. And we need to be comfortable in crowds again! Crowds can be fun!

With all the talk of the Spring Break wave hitting places like Michigan, here's the critical stat from the Covid dashboard: 24 people died of Covid yesterday. Around 475 people die every day from gun wounds, including suicide. 

We are reaching the end, and we need to acknowledge that.