A Virus Kills 315 Americans a Day, Shouldn’t We Try to Stop It?

For many, the coronavirus pandemic is in their rearview mirror, an afterthought, an echo of a memory.

For 330 people every day, it’s their last day on Earth because of it. For 3,200 people every day, it’s their first day in the hospital because of it. For 41,000 people every day, it’s their first day with a new COVID-19 infection.

That’s happening right now in 2022. That’s not a story from the start of the pandemic. It’s not plucked from an old newspaper that was jammed between seats on a bus. It’s right now, straight from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dashboard at 3 p.m. Nov. 14, 2022.

And nobody seems to be doing much about it.

Attend Safe’s risk mitigation protocols that seek to prevent contact with infected people makes a strong first line of defense, especially when coupled with our ability to test for flu and RSA. We’re glad to work with so many gatherings and events to provide that duty of care.

There have been comments disparaging our services as cowardly, but you can see from the numbers that coronavirus infections remain an ongoing threat, and is far worse than “just a flu,” even with antiviral medications like Paxlovid available, people are still dying.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, based on Boston-area schools found that ending mask requirements added 45 coronavirus cases per 1,000 students and staff—that’s an additional 4.5% of the school population sick—because people were tired of wearing masks and elected officials decided not to push for what health officials recommend.

And not some obscure community health department, but the CDC, the gold standard for health and wellness knowledge, that recommends people ages 2 and older wear masks indoors and in public spaces when they are in settings where infection rates are high. Schools, as I recall, are indoor settings. As I also recall, overcrowded classrooms are a frequent criticism of our public schools. It sounds like the CDC advice about what schools should be doing seems pretty clear.

Worse yet, children younger than 6 months, who aren’t eligible for coronavirus vaccines, are showing higher rates of COVID-19-related hospitalizations than other, older children. It seems likely that some of those unmasked schoolchildren may be bringing the virus home to their younger siblings.

Research by the Department of Veterans Affairs into reinfections shows that each additional COVID-19 infection raises the risks of complications both during their initial illness and over the long term after recovery. It can also worsen “long-Covid” symptoms.

We don’t need to retreat into a fatalistic “everyone’s gonna get it” mentality. Giving up in the face of adversity isn’t leading. Surrender isn’t a strategy. It’s cowardly.