Post by Nadica (She/Her) on Sept 17, 2024 2:18:08 GMT
If we lower our guard on COVID, we imperil the vulnerable - Published Sept 16, 2024
By Felicia Nimue Ackerman
In his Sept. 8 Ideas piece, “It’s OK to stop treating COVID as exceptional,” Sandro Galea asks whether abandonment of widespread precautions against the coronavirus — what he calls “all this normalcy” — is OK. The answer is no, not if we care about the old and immunocompromised, to whom COVID-19 is still a mortal threat.
Although Galea decries “COVID exceptionalism,” his claim that “the case rates, and the risks a COVID infection poses, are not unlike those of other diseases” is out of line with the fact that, according to the American Health Care Association, recent data indicate that “COVID-19 remains more serious than influenza” and that “seniors who contract COVID-19 are much more likely to experience serious illness, hospitalizations, or death.”
Of course society has to balance health against convenience. But that hardly means convenience must always win. Our society has apparently chosen forgoing the minor inconvenience of testing and masking over safety for its medically vulnerable members. As a bioethicist, I am appalled. As an old person, I am alarmed.
By Felicia Nimue Ackerman
In his Sept. 8 Ideas piece, “It’s OK to stop treating COVID as exceptional,” Sandro Galea asks whether abandonment of widespread precautions against the coronavirus — what he calls “all this normalcy” — is OK. The answer is no, not if we care about the old and immunocompromised, to whom COVID-19 is still a mortal threat.
Although Galea decries “COVID exceptionalism,” his claim that “the case rates, and the risks a COVID infection poses, are not unlike those of other diseases” is out of line with the fact that, according to the American Health Care Association, recent data indicate that “COVID-19 remains more serious than influenza” and that “seniors who contract COVID-19 are much more likely to experience serious illness, hospitalizations, or death.”
Of course society has to balance health against convenience. But that hardly means convenience must always win. Our society has apparently chosen forgoing the minor inconvenience of testing and masking over safety for its medically vulnerable members. As a bioethicist, I am appalled. As an old person, I am alarmed.