Living with Covid!

Living with Covid!

Living with Covid, the new semi-normal.

Nations all over the world are finally realizing the obvious, that there is no cure for Covid-19. They are now switching their national policies to “Living With Covid” and trusting their citizens to engage in thoughtful interactions to minimize viral infections.

The overreaction to Covid-19 has several roots as it first unfolded in early 2020. Low testing gave officials the impression that there was a higher death rate in the 5% to 6% rate. When testing became more available we saw the death rate plummet to 1% or 1.5% which was closer to the average rates of the previous annual flu. This earlier on prompted crackdown quarantines of entire populations. Traditionally, quarantine is used as a proper preventative health measure where the infected person stays sequestered to avoid infecting others. Those people who feel they are particularly at risk of a complicated sickness should self-quarantine, separate from those who are quarantined due to infection.

When public health policies deviated from the proper quarantine, this created massive economic problems that also cascading over to mental health and physical deconditioning. Fears, anxiety, economic stress, etc. have plagued the world from draconian health policies that mandated quarantines of the general public, an ill-fated decision based on a false premise that the virus was very deadly and that the infection could be avoided.

I wrote an article six months into the pandemic, one year ago from now, comparing how different nations approached the viral pandemic from no quarantines of the general population to extensive rotating severities of quarantine implementation. The former flatten the curve much sooner and the latter experienced frequent surges. When the mutated variance of the virus exposed populations that had already flattened the curve, they experienced massive surges but quickly or not so quickly flattened again. Their economies were not severely impacted as were those who locked their nation down again and again.

“Living with Covid-19” is the ultimate realization in futility. The false belief that infection could be prevented with this virus is erroneous thinking and it is good that this thinking is finally coming to an end. All we can do is minimize the exposure to the infection we get so that natural immunity can develop, but with a less serious illness experience. There are other considerations that influence this issue particularly in third world countries with lower healthcare capabilities and where the elderly live in multi-generation families.

What does living with Covid-19 look like? It’s an open society where people go to work, then go home and go to public events, simply enjoying life. Those who were previously infected are immune and not likely to be reinfected so they may or may not elected to wear a mask. Those who are not infected should get a vaccine to minimize the experience when they do get infected. Those who are not infected yet should wear masks, double masking if necessary. This will assist in their eventual exposure to be a smaller dosage and therefore less serious than illness. Eventually, the entire population will have gone through herd immunity. Unfortunately, yes there will be frail individuals who will have quite limited mobilization in society. People will need to be conscious of that. Other public exposure policies such as mask-wearing in airplanes etc. could remain for several years as the new normal eventually comes into shape.

This is the beginning of sanity being restored in the world and a reversal of such damage and economic consequences to unproven public health policies have been implemented in the past two years. Lessons learned hopefully.

Yours in health,
docMIKE

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