Three summers into the pandemic now, I should be used to it, but I’m not. In fact, as my own COVID-19 fatigue grows and mutates, it seems to be getting worse. Not the pandemic itself, mind you, but our collective response to it.
How, I wonder, is it possible that as a society we continue to discount and normalize the carnage wrought by a virus that we know how to mitigate but find it too personally, professionally, and politically inconvenient to do so?
Yes, I know, most of us are “done . . . over it . . . no longer willing to live in fear or have our lives disrupted any longer . . . “ and yet, the poorest, most marginalized, and vulnerable among us are still getting sick and dying at rates that seem pretty unacceptable to me.
How is it okay that just last week the KY COVID-19 Weekly Report dated Sept. 12, 2022 said 119 Clark Countians contracted COVID-19 (actual case numbers are certainly much higher due to unreported home testing results and the asymptomatic) and 65 Kentuckians died from it in a seven-day period?
Most people I know — and there are many — who have tested positive lately fully recovered within a week. But all those folks were vaccinated with the original two-shot vaccine and, in many cases, the two monovalent boosters. The non-vaccinated people I know who got sick pulled through, too — fortunately — being otherwise healthy individuals and not elderly.
But not everyone is young and healthy. So here’s a question: Do we feel any obligation to help the most vulnerable among us? Do we even want to?
I’m not sure I want to know our collective answer, but I hope it is a compassionate and resounding “Yes!”
If it is, there’s something we can do, according to the medical experts who appeared on KET’S Sept. 12 Kentucky Tonight program. To paraphrase the chair of UK’s Department of Immunology and Molecular Genetics, Ilhem Messaoudi, Ph.D: While it’s important to get the elderly and immunocompromised vaccinated, it’s MORE important that everyone else get vaccinated and boosted with the new bivalent vaccine that recently became available from Pfizer and Moderna.
Why?
Because, Messaoudi explained, vaccinating immunocompromised folks doesn’t guarantee they will generate strong immune responses, which makes them particularly vulnerable to infection and tragic outcomes. But if we who are “immune competent” get all our shots, we can provide a “force field” around our most vulnerable fellow human beings, thereby protecting them in ways they cannot protect themselves.
Dr. Fadi Al Akhrass, medical director of Infectious Disease and Infection Prevention at Pikeville Medical Center, put it more bluntly: “Nobody is safe until everybody is safe. Some people are, unfortunately, fully dependent on our immunity to be protected, so we need to keep that spirit in mind. Boosting the immune system against BA.5, mainly, is very important.”
Makes sense to me. But do we care enough to actually do it?
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The citizens of Clark County are among the most generous people I know. But our community disease level continues to be high while our vaccination rates remain low. Since the pandemic began, we have lost numerous friends and neighbors to a disease that we know how to stop. Countless others among us continue to endure illness, isolation, and lost time from school, work, and loved ones. We are all worn out, and while “life goes on” is a common refrain I hear these days, is this really how we want to live?
Vaccines and the new bivalent boosters are available all over town now. I got mine recently and hope you will get yours too. Let’s all step up and take care of each other — like the compassionate people that we are.
Click on the following link to watch the entire one-hour episode of Kentucky Tonight in which the medical experts mentioned above, plus Baptist Health Lexington infectious disease specialist Dr. Mark Dougherty, discuss COVID-19, monkeypox, and influenza with program host Renee Shaw:
https://www.pbs.org/video/covid-19-monkeypox-and-influenza-ejmthu/
You can also view the KY COVID-19 Weekly Report at https://chfs.ky.gov/agencies/dph/covid19/COVID19DailyReport.pdf
