Let's Work Together to Check the Spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus

Some vaccinated people are complaining because the CDC has changed its recommendations for face masks for vaccinated people. In a pandemic, particularly in a pandemic in which the virus is mutating and producing more infectious and more dangerous variants, recommendations are going to change as we learn more about the virus and its transmission and the response of people to earlier recommendations.

We need to keep foremost in our mind the unpleasant fact that we are in the MIDST of a pandemic. Some people may have interpreted the decline in virus infections earlier in the summer as evidence that the pandemic was subsiding. They, however, were overly optimistic and did not take into consideration human behavior or the ability of the COVID-19 coronavirus to mutate in more infectious, more dangerous variants.

While vaccines work, no one has claimed that the vaccines are 100% effective against all variants of the virus and the health experts have been studying how long their effectiveness lasts.  Vaccines do, however, mitigate the seriousness of the virus infection, prevent hospitalizations and deaths, and slow the spread of the disease.

Public health measures like face masks, social distancing, adequate ventilation of indoor areas, limitations on the size of gatherings, quarantine of the infected and those exposed to the disease also slow its spread.

We are far from returning to “normal” and people need to disabuse themselves of the idea that a return to “normal” is just around the corner.

If we stopped dividing into camps over the COVID-19 pandemic, stopped giving credence to disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, and worked together as a team, we could get a handle on the pandemic. We could reduce human suffering and save lives.

Regrettably some politicians are exploiting the divisions over the pandemic to advance their political careers. Foreign actors have been approaching online influencers to spread disinformation, seeking to weaken the United States by exacerbating its divisions over the pandemic. They have been playing upon the fears of Americans about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. The anti-vaxx movement has been spreading disinformation and misinformation for its own ends.

We forget that the United States was for a large part victorious in World War II because most of its people united behind the war effort. We need to do that today. We need to unite behind the effort to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus.