COVID Mitigation Worked

 

Without a Plan

The impact of vaccines and behavior on US cumulative deaths from COVID-19

 America’s improvised strategy to fight COVID-19—public and private behavioral changes to slow transmission until vaccines could be deployed—prevented close to 800,000 deaths in the country. The ad hoc effort’s effectiveness is surprising because public health officials could not precisely target mitigation as they lacked precise information on the routes and mechanisms of the disease’s transmission.  -Brookings

What Worked?

Hand Washing

Masking

Social Distancing

Isolating

Testing

Lockdowns

Ad hoc measures to keep us safe were the best things we could do with no plan in place until the vaccine was developed. Research suggests without the ad hoc measures, COVID would have cost over two million lives instead of one million. It is estimated that vaccine hesitancy cost an additional 273 thousand lives.

There were two forces at work. The first group, people who had a a good idea of what needed to be done, forged ahead with solutions. 

The second group, people who were blown away by the enormity of the task, spent an inordinate amount of energy looking for somebody to blame. They looked for conspiracies from the CDC and HIH. They blamed the World Health Organization. They blamed China for deliberately releasing the virus as a form of warfare. Another conspiracy theory claimed it was a plot by the establishment to deny the president in his bid for reelection. None of this was supported by the facts. All of it got in the way, and put all of us at risk.

Thank God the first group persevered. 

Long COVID's Economic Drag

Leaving the lockdown/Not leaving COVID

Early debate about the COVID lockdown was it was bad for business and bad for the economy.

The same arguments were used in opposition to masking mandates and in opposition to social distancing. 

The answer has become, we are now living with COVID. The answer ignores the economic impact on the everyday people who are still becoming sick and 500 people a day dying in this country because of COVID 19. 

Kate Bach writes in an article for The Brookings Institute, “With 16.3 million working-age Americans afflicted and annual wage losses totaling nearly $200 billion, long COVID is already a meaningful drag on U.S. economic performance and household financial health. And absent intervention, the situation is likely to worsen.” Data shows Long COVID is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work.

Other cost include 

• With 10.6 million unfilled jobs at the time, Long COVID potentially accounted for 15% of the labor shortage. 
• Estimates of medical care and lost quality of life related to Long COVID cost an additional $544 billion each year. 

Stemming the Economic Drag

Bach cites five things government can do help those with Long COVID and lessen the economic impact.

• Better prevention and treatment options
• Expanded paid sick leave
• Improved employer accommodations
• Wider access to disability insurance
• Enhanced data collection

There's a cost to living with COVID. Those costs need to be addressed. Claiming those left behind are just so much collateral damage seems cruel and unusual. Are we a nation that cares about its people more than the corporate bottom line? Victory celebrations are premature.