Philly S Mask Mandate Is Back But It S Got Little To Do With Covid

I can remember when I assumed the pandemic would end. It was about a year ago. I had just received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and my wife had just received the second Moderna vaccine. My daughter finally got back to school after a year of withering away classes. It was as if we were turning a corner as a country, with the horrific death rates in the winter of 2021 receding into the past. We had not yet left the forest, but we would arrive soon. However, we are in mid-April 2022, more than two years into the pandemic, and my Philadelphia city has just announced that it will re-enforce indoor masking next week, just over a month after the city finally left. Instead of having a definite beginning, middle and end, the pandemic has taken a different form, resembling the circular structure of pagan religions rather than the linear evolution of Christian eschatology. The pandemic does not end, it evolves, rises and falls and then rises again, like the cycles of the moon or the tides. Philadelphia enjoyed about a month of release from the masks, but now they are back. I have no doubt that the new mandate will be gone at some point, but I very much doubt that it will be lost for good. The command is now back, of course, because the highly contagious variant of Omicron that caused a huge increase in cases a few months ago has created an even more contagious sub-variable labeled BA.2. by epidemiologists. This sounds ominous – and it’s, for those who have not been vaccinated and have not acquired natural immunity from catching the original version of Omicron in late fall and winter. For the rest of us – those who have been vaccinated, who have received at least one booster vaccine and / or who have developed antibodies due to a previous brush with Omicron – it will be a risk, but very small. It’s hard to say exactly how small it is. This is because we can no longer know for sure how widespread the virus is. The national number of new cases has started to rise again, after declining for months, and the sharp increase is more pronounced in the northeast. But for the first time since the pandemic began, home tests are widely available. The results of those who do self-diagnosis are not taken into account by the government. This means that reports of new cases, as well as positivity rates, are now more unreliable than ever. We just do not know how many people are sick – although delayed indicators, such as COVID-related morbidity and death rates currently at low tide, will continue to be useful and accurate in the coming weeks and months. The story goes on Without solid data to document new cases, we turn to an anecdote – and by that measure, things are clearly getting worse at Philly. A family member who teaches at a university in the city says he has never had so many students with COVID. Most people suffer from cold-like or quite mild flu-like symptoms. This is in line with what those who were vaccinated and boosted with the original Omicron wave experienced. It’s not great, but it is also not an emergency that requires renewed public health interventions. Or is it? The city of Philadelphia certainly seems to think so. City Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole acknowledged in a press conference Monday afternoon that the official tally of the new cases was still extremely low (just 142, when the seven-day average during Omicron’s worst season was nearly 4,000). However, Bettigole insisted that “this is our chance to prevent a pandemic”, although we do so by imposing a new mask mandate when case numbers and hospitalizations are low, contrary to the CDC’s recommendations. Pressing the decision to ignore the CDC leadership, Bettigole pointed to … structural racism. Local conditions matter, he said. “We have all seen here in Philadelphia how much the history of red lines, the history of inequalities, especially the black and brown communities in the city, has affected us. And so it makes sense to be more careful in Philadelphia than, you know, maybe in a rich suburb “. So people in a wealthy suburb decide for themselves whether to wear a mask when entering a store or other interior, but those in Philly will be forced by the government fiat to do so because… there used to be a red line in the city? I honestly can not analyze the statement or create a coherent argument to justify it. (Your freedom was once restricted, so should your freedom be restricted now?) All I know is that from next week people who live or work or visit the city will be less free than those who do not. And that the rule will be imposed for reasons that have little to do with a threat to public health. Philadelphians, whether black, brown, or white, are protected from the worst coronavirus symptoms by vaccines, and even more so if they receive booster vaccines according to current FDA approvals and recommendations. In the vast majority of cases, vaccines turn a positive diagnosis (paroxysmal infection) into a few days of discomfort rather than a life-threatening event. Does this not mean that the number one priority for healthcare professionals should be the widest possible distribution of vaccines, with additional treatments widely available for the very few who develop worse symptoms? If every person in Philadelphia was vaccinated, would even just one mask be necessary? This is what’s so crazy and discouraging about this last turn in the COVID-19 pandemic epic: Instead of responding to the persistence of the virus by doing what would allow us to live our lives with as little disturbance and normalcy as possible. those in positions of power seem to prefer to impose greater restrictions which are also less effective. This was disappointing when it happened early in the pandemic, when we were all searching in the dark, trying to understand in real time how the virus works and how to protect ourselves from it. But after more than two years and a million deaths and the approval of many effective vaccines that for almost everyone who receives them have turned COVID-19 into something as deadly and debilitating as the flu, strep throat or bronchitis, it is worse from frustrating. It is something closer to anger. I’m not a troublemaker, so I’ll obey the mask when I’m in town from next week. But I will not do it to stay safe. I will do it to comply with the rules imposed by public officials for a minimal reason. As for my health, I will get it in my hands when I get the second booster vaccine in early May, six months after the last. The prospect of living with the endemic COVID-19 would seem far less intolerable if that were all we expected to do. Maybe one day it will happen. All I know is that at the moment, in Philadelphia and probably in other cities very soon, we are not there yet.

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