Overcome Mistrust to Stop the Next Pandemic

You’ve heard it here before, but it’s nice to see other media catching up: The New York Times published an opinion article that shows how mistrust in government led to conditions that resulted in needless deaths during the pandemic. The article uses Brazil as an example, but many of the factors it lists were shared with the U.S. experience.

The article joins Attend Safe in urging for an effort rebuild trust in our health systems. The good news is that most people hold their personal doctors in high regard, so there’s a solid foundation. I never understood why people would seek health guidance from celebrities and random strangers on social media instead of their usual health care professionals, but here we are.

Meanwhile the acceptance rate for “bivalent” vaccines—designed to counter the multitude of omicron strains of coronavirus—sits at just 16.7% of those eligible, despite almost universal information from health professionals that they are safe and offer protection against serious illness and death.

Regularly deployed boosters sound like they’ll become a regular thing. Building on the success of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government announced Monday that it will spend more than $5 billion to speed up development of new COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. “Project NextGen,” as it’s called, will aim to provide better protection from a spectrum of potentially threatening coronaviruses, including the ones that cause COVID-19 infections.

While the current bivalent vaccines help prevent serious illness and death, their effectiveness to reduce infections and transmissions decline over time, HHS said, warning that lost immunity and new variants could result in a new outbreak. After all, even with primary vaccinations, the low uptake of the best boosters contributes to more than 100,000 new confirmed COVID-19 cases each week, and every new case offers an opportunity for a mutation into a more dangerous strain.

In case you missed it…

An article published April 6 by the medical journal, The Lancet, suggests we weren’t nuts for wiping down surfaces and constantly sanitizing our hands in the early months of the pandemic. The article says the presence of coronavirus on hands and frequently-touched household surfaces shows that they are potentially responsible for COVID-19 spread within homes.

COVID-19 BY THE NUMBERS: In the U.S., 1,327 people died from a coronavirus infection during the week that ended April 17, per the CDC. The percentage of Americans who received an updated booster remained unchanged at 16.7% of eligible people.

   Amanda Schleede is founder and CEO of Attend Safe, which helps people to attend to life with sensible safety protocols. Visit Attend Safe online at AttendSafe.com.