Middlebury, a Vermont college whose campus is 99% fully vaccinated, went to remote learning last week due to rising Covid-19 cases.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The state of Vermont is an interesting case study in general. It is one of the most highly vaccinated states in the country, yet it is dealing with record breaking Covid surges. You would think this would be the final nail in the "evidence coffin" needed to solidify that vaccines are not preventing cases, but sadly, it is not.
Social media is still replete with posts promoting both sides of the argument, some defiantly asserting that vaccines do prevent cases, and some defiantly asserting they don’t.
And as I’ve said before, who is right at this point isn't going to change anything.
People have already made up their minds about Covid-19, forever. Those who believe in the efficacy of vaccines are willing to die on that hill. They will find whatever evidence they can that seems to support their viewpoint. The same can be said about those who feel the vaccines aren’t working. These people vehemently believe that a pandemic defined by cases can’t be stopped by a vaccine which doesn’t prevent cases, and there will be no changing their minds.
Despite what mainstream media outlets claim, evidence for and against the efficacy of vaccines exists, and at this point, the whole thing is just a horrible case of confirmation bias that will never be resolved.
And that’s really the point of this article. The time for debating what Covid-19 is has ended. We need to stop looking for a magic bullet argument that will resolve all the disagreements related to the disease, and start worrying about how to best operate society in spite of those disagreements.
And there is something simple we can do which will put us on a path toward that reachable goal:
We can admit that many of the original beliefs we had concerning Covid-19, its spread, and vaccinations were wrong, but that they were necessary evils based on our best guesses at the time.
I don’t understand why this is so hard to do.
I mean, I guess I do. I know it can be incredibly difficult to say the words, “I was wrong” when it comes to closely held beliefs, but I'll never understand why people feel the need to be so personally connected to random ideas they developed about Covid-19 and/or vaccinations during a time period when no one knew anything about anything.
Have you paid any attention whatsoever to the WHO or the CDC when it comes to claims about Covid-19? To say the least, neither organization has been a model of consistency. If the premiere health organizations of the world can’t maintain consistent Covid-19 narratives for more than a few weeks, I don’t understand why average American citizens feel so confident in their beliefs about the virus that they are firmly unwilling to change their minds in any way.
Consider for a moment how things have changed in a year and a half.
When Covid-19 originally hit, people were worried it was a societally devastating pandemic that would sweep the world like The Black Plague, mercilessly ravishing everything in sight.
We now know it wasn’t that.
That doesn’t mean it’s not serious, that doesn’t mean it’s totally irrelevant, and that doesn’t mean it’s no worse than the flu. It just means it wasn’t nearly as bad as many initially suggested.
When Covid-19 originally hit, people thought we needed to shut down schools, churches, businesses, and a generational way of life to protect ourselves from it.
We now know we didn’t.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take any precautions or pay any special attention to those who are actually seriously susceptible to its dangers. It just means continuing carte blanche with these initial measures, which clearly HAVE NOT worked at stopping Covid-19, doesn’t make sense.
When Covid-19 originally hit, people felt that sanitizing groceries and not eating food prepared by someone and wearing masks at all times was the only way to avoid its wrath.
We now know that wasn’t the case.
That doesn’t mean you can’t take extra precautions when it comes to avoiding germs or be extra vigilant when sick to avoid spreading germs to people who are immune compromised or have underlying health issues. It just means the amount of precautions that needed to be taken and the dangers of Covid-19 to the vast majority of people, were initially exaggerated, sometimes greatly.
When Covid-19 first hit, people believed that the primary driver of cases was human behavior, and that Covid cases could be controlled and/or eliminated by force altering societal behaviors.
We now know states that implemented some of the strictest mandates are suffering from some of the highest case rates.
That doesn’t mean hospitals and nursing homes shouldn’t take extra precautions. It just means there is absolutely a seasonal element to Covid-19 which is beyond our control and that a society can never lock down “enough” to stamp out such an easily transferable disease. We should therefore expect seasonal surges in The Midwest and Northeast during certain cycles, and seasonal surges in The South and Southwest during opposing cycles.
When Covid-19 first hit, people felt that vaccines would be the means by which we stopped the spread of Covid-19, and that highly vaccinated areas would see significantly fewer cases than lesser vaccinated areas over time.
That doesn’t mean vaccines are totally useless or that they can’t play a pivotal role in protecting the 1% of people who are in life threatening danger from Covid-19. It just means that we need to totally reevaluate the metric by we define the term pandemic, and admit that vaccines which can’t stop cases will never end the pandemic based on how the media is currently choosing to define it.
The underlying issue connecting all these points can be simplified to this:
Starting in 2020, our society made a massive amount of blanket decisions concerning Covid-19 due to the fear of a potential imminent danger. In light of the now better known, true danger of Covid-19, many of those decisions have proven to be unnecessary or flat out incorrect, and we need to reevaluate them on a grand scale.
And that makes me wonder, nearly two years in, after everything that has happened, at what point will people finally be willing to at least entertain the notion that the narratives of these types of articles are at best misguided, and at worst outright dishonest?
There is evidence that some areas are starting to question our response to Covid-19. Gretchen Whitmer, Queen of the Mandate, has abandoned all mandates. Jared Polis, Democratic Governor of Colorado, recently declared the Covid emergency "over." Florida, under the leadership of Ron DeSantis, is experiencing the lowest rate of Covid-19 cases in the country, despite the state's near complete refusal to issue mandates of any kind throughout the pandemic.
I’m not asking anyone to forget about Covid-19. I’m not asking anyone to deny its existence or fly an “I was wrong about everything” flag in their front yard. All I’m asking is whether or not we, as a country, can reevaluate some of the emergency-induced, rash decisions that became the overnight norm a year and a half ago in order to find a more reasonable middle ground in how we respond to a disease that, regardless of vaccinations, is going to exist in our society for a long time to come.
Is that asking too much?
Commentaires