This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator datedMarch 18, 2022
Mid-March marks two years since the pandemic changed everyone’s lives. On March 14, 2020, less than two weeks after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in New York City, the state neared 500 cases and a Brooklyn woman became New York’s first COVID-19 death. The following day, Mayor de Blasio announced that schools would close.
We have certainly come a long way since then. Though vaccines are not a shield that eliminate COVID transmission, it is incontrovertible that they moderately lower the risk of infection and greatly reduce severe outcomes, providing our best defense against the virus and to returning to a new normal.
All of the COVID figures we have followed these past two years – cases, positivity rate, hospitalizations, deaths – are currently at low levels, which is great news. Local and state government has taken that as an opportunity to lift restrictions. It is clear that people have pandemic fatigue and we cannot live with restrictions indefinitely. Just two months after the height of the omicron surge that burned through New York like a wildfire, it seems many have decided it is time to just flip a switch and return to life as if it is 2019.
To be clear, I agree we need to transition back to a new normal. I recognize that some people will continue to be more cautious than others and we need to have flexibility to allow for some choice in some environments with respect to COVID mitigation measures. Continuing to require everyone to do everything in every place to prevent any COVID transmission is unreasonable and extreme, but simply living life as if we had never encountered COVID is the other extreme end of the spectrum.
“During that omicron surge, in the span of 4 days in January, three New York City students died of COVID. Recently, three more children died of COVID in the city on March 3 and March 4.”
Citation….
The problem with completely removing all COVID safety measures completely at once, is that when we see an increase in transmission, it will be impossible to determine which missing measure has had a negative impact. It may be that the powers-that-be intend that to be the case, so they can just throw their hands up and say there is nothing that can be done and we just need to live with these periodic waves.
It is true that COVID is not going to be totally eradicated anytime soon. We will move to it being endemic, where we live with it. Vaccinations mitigate the severity of symptoms and therapeutic treatments prevent many deaths, but it is naïve to think we can just leap into a new time where we treat it like the common cold.
Children are a good place to start when evaluating this. Throughout the pandemic, kids have been less likely to contract the virus and have had rates or hospitalizations and deaths that are far lower than other age groups. However, during the delta variant surge, those rates were higher amongst children, and then they were still higher yet during the omicron surge that infected so many children.
During that omicron surge, in the span of 4 days in January, three New York City students died of COVID. Recently, three more children died of COVID in the city on March 3 and March 4. It was at the time when these pediatric deaths occurred that it became known that Mayor Adams was going to end the indoor mask requirement in city schools. Adams has still never commented on the children who died of COVID in January or in March.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, second largest in the nation to New York City, announced this past week that they would be continuing to require masks in schools. Since the discontinuation of mask requirements by Adams, New York City student cases are up 36 per cent and staff cases are up 45 per cent from the previous week.
We could have eased other measures and waited a bit longer to ease mask requirements in the indoor congregate settings that schools are, to evaluate how it goes. As wastewater testing in the city is showing a spike in COVID cases, we have removed all mitigation methods and have no plan on how to deal our next surge. We need a way of transitioning back to a new normal without pretending that COVID surges do not exist.
