This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated April 9, 2021
Living through a global pandemic for over a year has been very difficult. Every aspect of life has been affected and everyone has had to deal with challenges, some more than others. With vaccinations being administered exponentially quicker by the week, the light at the tunnel is growing brighter.
As of April 5, the United States was averaging 3.1 million shots per day over the previous seven-day period and had begun recording days where over 4 million vaccines had been administered in a 24-hour period. One in three Americans have received at least one dose, and over 40 percent of all adults. About one-quarter of all adults are now fully vaccinated. Among those most vulnerable to serious complications from COVID-19, 75 percent of seniors have received at least one shot and 55 percent are now fully vaccinated.
“We may be in the home stretch, but we are not quite there just yet and we need to stay focused on what we all need to do to so that the vaccines have the ability to starve the virus of opportunities to spread and mutate.”
Joe Biden had set an ambitious goal of getting 100 million shots into arms in his first one hundred days in office. Through his first 75 days, 167 million shots had been administered, with New York accounting for ten percent of them.
The numbers do not lie. With most Americans aged 65 and older already fully vaccinated and three in four having received at least one dose, the numbers of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among this demographic has decreased significantly. Seniors have accounted for roughly eight in ten of all COVID deaths, but in the month of March, that fell by 5 percent. Younger age groups are also now accounting for a far greater percentage of all new cases being reported.
Our overall numbers are still much improved compared to what they were at the beginning of the year, but with a current positivity rate over six percent, Brooklyn is classified as a county with a high rate of community transmission by the CDC. New cases per day in New York has recently been, on average, six times the rate it was this past summer.
We may be in the home stretch, but we are not quite there just yet and we need to stay focused on what we all need to do to so that the vaccines have the ability to starve the virus of opportunities to spread and mutate. If the virus continues to be transmitted at current rates, there is an increased chance that new variants will emerge and the possibility that new strains are resistant to the very vaccines that we are all counting on to stamp out COVID-19.
The CDC has issued updated recommendations recently, such as advising adults who are fully vaccinated that they can visit indoors, unmasked with members of one other household that are also fully vaccinated. Guidelines will continue to be updated and recommended restrictions eased as more Americans become protected and, hopefully, less of the virus is being transmitted throughout communities. There will not be one day when we suddenly go back to normal, but instead a gradual return, based on scientific findings as they become available.
The more closely we all adhere to what the recommendations are, the quicker we can start to gain back more of what seems like normal life, without taking steps backward that ultimately slow the process. We have all sacrificed throughout the pandemic, but we currently have the opportunity to start moving back toward pre-pandemic life, little by little. Now is the time to remain focused, despite the inevitable fatigue, to ensure the gradual improvements that are within our grasp are not unnecessarily slowed.
The irony is that we may need to tap the breaks a little bit to arrive at where we want to get to as quickly as possible. Oddly enough, it is during this time when we still need to remain mostly apart, that we need to come together, in a proverbial sense.
We are currently in a race of vaccinations against COVID-19 transmissions. While the government has ensured that vaccinations are happening much quicker than anyone originally forecasted, it is up to all of us to slow the spread of the virus.
