Hope springs for near-normal times -- again -- March 24, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

We attended a concert last Saturday. The Alexandria Symphony Orchestra performed in a nearby church, and we walked over with neighbors on a mild spring evening.

It seemed like the Before Times – except that nearly everyone at the sold-out event wore masks and was supposed to be fully vaccinated.

I tried to remember the last time I’d sat in a room full of people, listening to live music – or, for that matter, in a church. The coronavirus robbed us of so many shared experiences we once took for granted.

Bach and Vivaldi are good for whatever ails, and the Ukrainian folk song the orchestra added to the program was haunting. I blinked back tears.

After two years of isolation, cancellation, fear and death, people are venturing out again. Concerts, festivals, sports and spring break travel are back. Thousands of maskless visitors swarm the Tidal Basin in Washington to enjoy the cherry blossoms.

And yet, while Putin’s vicious war in Ukraine has kicked the pandemic off the front page, the pandemic is not finished with us yet.

The orchestra’s website carries this dose of reality for concert attendees: “You understand that you may contract the virus . . . you agree that you understand the risks of COVID-19 exposure, the potential consequences of exposure, and you voluntarily assume the risks of attendance.”

Besides that, enjoy the show.

The good news is COVID-19 cases have declined significantly in the United States, although about 1,000 people every day die of the insidious disease. Most at risk of hospitalization and death remain the unvaccinated.

 With cases low and people out and about, it feels like the hopeful days of last spring, when President Joe Biden proclaimed a “summer of freedom.” Prematurely. Summer brought the deadly Delta variant. Then came Omicron.

Today, about 35% of new coronavirus cases in the United States are attributed to the new, highly transmissible Omicron subvariant known as BA.2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It seems to cause less severe illness than previous strains, and vaccinations and boosters help immunity, although their effectiveness does wane.

We’ve not yet seen a surge in BA.2 cases as is occurring in Europe, and it’s not certain we will. The World Health Organization Tuesday blamed the increase in countries like Britain, France, Germany and Italy on their lifting COVID restrictions too “brutally.”

Most places here have also ditched mask requirements, and social distancing is mostly a memory. High-profile positive COVID-19 tests make news: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, among others.

Almost everyone I know has -- or has had -- COVID-19. Thankfully, their cases have been mild. No one can predict what mutations lie ahead or how they’ll affect us in the moment or later.

The Biden administration wants Congress to approve $22.5 billion in emergency COVID funds to purchase more vaccines and treatments. A second booster for those over 65 may be available this spring, but the administration says it lacks funds to stockpile enough boosters and treatments for everyone, should they be needed in a fall surge.

Republicans contend unspent, previously allocated COVID relief funds should be used first. The administration says it is difficult to redirect such funds.

Each person can order free, at-home COVID tests online. A household is eligible to receive two sets of four tests. Check out https://www.covidtests.gov/

Former CDC director Tom Frieden wrote an essay in The New York Times Tuesday titled, “The Next Covid Wave Is Probably on Its Way,” arguing we should use this lull to prepare.

First and foremost, get vaccinated and boosted. Some 60% of Americans are not up to date on their COVID vaccinations. That’s 15 million seniors at higher risk.

If you are older, have an impaired immune system, or are around people who do, wear a good, well-fitting mask, such as an N95, Frieden advises. In addition, communities should also monitor for coronavirus in wastewater, as they do for polio and other diseases, to detect outbreaks sooner and stop the spread.

“For now, most of us can enjoy the warm spring sun on our unmasked faces. But we can also do a lot more to control COVID,” Frieden writes. “How we play it will determine what happens next.”

Take care.

©2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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No holiday from masks, tests as omicron surges -- Dec. 23 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As omicron tightens its grip, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Monday declared a state of emergency.

Once again, masks are required indoors in such places as churches, gyms and grocery stores, regardless of vaccination status. Masks are not yet required in restaurants and bars in the nation’s capital, as they are in New York and Los Angeles.

“I think we’re all tired of it. I’m tired of it, too,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said, announcing the mask mandate will last until Jan. 31. “But we have to respond to what’s happening in our city and what’s happening in our nation.”

The mayor is correct. What’s happening is nearly three-fourths of the new coronavirus cases in the United States are now from the highly transmissible omicron variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. Coronavirus daily case totals are at their highest level since last summer.

There is no statewide mask mandate in Virginia, but the Virginia Department of Health recommends masks be worn indoors in communities with substantial or high COVID-19 transmission.

More than 800,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19. Public health officials knew the coronavirus mutates and new variants were likely. Still,  fast-spreading omicron caught nearly everyone by surprise last month.

Much remains unknown, including whether the illness omicron causes is less severe than the delta variant’s, and what the long-term effects of even a mild case may be.

The first death in the United States related to omicron was announced Monday. The victim was an unvaccinated man in his 50s with an underlying health condition in Houston, authorities said.

So, while we all feel coronavirus fatigue, we find ourselves on the verge of another  New Year having to rally again to fight an insidious, unpredictable virus.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who died this year, once said you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might wish you had.

It’s wrong that Americans have had to stand in line for hours for coronavirus tests, as they have in some parts of the country. Other nations have long been able to supply their residents with free, at-home test kits.

The Biden administration is now rushing to make available, starting next month, 500 million free, rapid, in-home coronavirus test kits. The government is opening more testing and vaccination sites, deploying military medical teams to overwhelmed hospitals, and plans to expand hospital capacity.

These are important changes that remind us we are not in the same place we were a year ago. Last year during the holidays we glimpsed the hope of vaccinations as the end of the pandemic. This year, we known the pandemic is still with us, and we are lucky if all we must endure are its inconveniences.

Mask and vaccination mandates cannot be partisan when the virus is bipartisan. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, who both are vaccinated and boosted, tested positive for COVID-19, as did Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and a cancer survivor.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases are common. President Joe Biden, 79, sat near someone on Air Force One the other day who later tested positive.

Most breakthrough cases seem to be mild, which is why Biden is urging every eligible American to get fully vaccinated and boosted.

And yet, when former President Donald Trump said Sunday in Texas he had received a booster, some in the audience booed. That’s a sad commentary on the misguided, ill-informed, anti-vax crowd.

Fortunately, there are no plans for lockdowns or a widespread return to remote schooling. We are learning to live with uncertainty.

Wearing an effective mask, such as the N95, getting vaccinated and boosted, and tested if we feel sick or are exposed to someone with COVID-19 are steps all of us can take to protect ourselves and others.

Those who feel their personal liberty is abridged by mask mandates can do something about it: They can stay home, off public transportation and out of public places.

As much as we Americans don’t like rules or mandates, especially rules that change, we must live in the real world. We all want the pandemic to end. We also want our families, friends and ourselves to be around next year. Be vigilant.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Midterm campaigns kick off with a political jab -- Dec. 9, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

During a recent medical test, I noticed my face mask had slipped down.

“Sorry!” I said to the technician, who was also masked. “I’m vaccinated and boosted, and you are too, right?” Slight pause.

“I’m healthy,” he said, using a favorite dodge of the unvaccinated.

Why would anyone whose job requires close contact with people who could be sick or immune-compromised take such a risk for himself, his patients and co-workers?

He said he had decades of experience, including at a hospital where tuberculosis patients coughed in his face, and was healthy. He doesn’t buy the need for vaccinations against COVID-19, thinks they could be harmful, and believes the number of reported COVID deaths is inflated.

Scientists, however, agree vaccinations help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and its severity and are less risky than the disease.

Most healthcare workers voluntarily take the commonsense precaution of vaccinations. Still, about 30% of workers in hospitals were unvaccinated as of September, according to a Centers for Disease Control study.

Last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued rules requiring vaccinations for healthcare workers and for businesses with 100 employees or more. Both rules are stalled, at least temporarily, by court challenges.

The healthcare rule would require all workers in facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid funding to be fully vaccinated, with no exceptions, or facilities could lose federal funding. The OSHA rule includes a provision that allows workers who do not get vaccinated to be tested weekly and wear masks on the job.

 President Joe Biden was reluctant to impose such vaccination mandates, but after incentives and voluntary behavior weren’t enough, he earlier rolled out requirements for federal workers and employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated.

The mandate for contractors, which included limited exceptions for medical and religious reasons, was blocked Tuesday in federal court. The White House vows to continue fighting for mandates.

Many private employers have imposed vaccination mandates on their own. They realize the economy won’t get back to normal – whatever that is -- until more of the population is protected against this deadly, unpredictable disease.

The latest troubling news about the fast-spreading omicron variant has led public health officials to urge everyone eligible to get vaccinations and booster shots. New research from Pfizer and BioNTech indicates a booster shot may help protect against omicron, but it’s too soon to know.

Opponents argue vaccination mandates are an example of federal overreach. Politicians like to claim they personally are pro-vaccine but anti-mandate. They conveniently forget they and their children had to receive vaccinations against other diseases to enroll in school.

But COVID-19 vaccination mandates are seen as a potent political issue for the midterm elections. The Senate voted Wednesday to repeal Biden’s mandate for companies with more than 100 employees. All Republicans and two Democrats – Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana -- voted to nullify the mandate.

The 52-48 vote was largely symbolic, if not a political stunt. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to bring the measure up for a vote in the House, and if it were to pass, the White House said Biden would veto it. It would be his first presidential veto.

Opponents of mandates say their constituents fear mandates will cost jobs and wreck the economy, but instead of working to educate the uninformed, politicians pander.

“Encouraging and requiring are two different things,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. Republican of West Virginia, told reporters. More than killing the American economy, she said, the vaccine mandate is “killing the American spirit of being able to make decisions about yourself, to be respected for that.”

Oh, please.

Vaccination mandates may be more popular than Republican politicians think. Half of Americans support the mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees, while 47% oppose it, a Wall Street Journal poll reported this week. Slightly more – 55% -- support vaccination mandates for public safety workers, such as police and firefighters.

Everyone is sick of the pandemic, but it shows no sign of waning. We all need to take responsibility to fight it. To everyone who’s eligible, except those with a legitimate medical excuse: Get your vaccinations and boosters.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.