A couple of months into the pandemic, my daughter sent me a cartoon from a local paper. Two people were chatting. One asked the other what year some major event in their life occurred, perhaps a wedding. The other replied that it was 2020. Ah, said the first, I remember 2020; it was the first year of the pandemic.
At the time, the cartoon evoked a mixture of ridiculous humour and dread. We had navigated a couple of horrible months. We were starting to realise that this was not going away in a few weeks, as we all assumed at the start. But the idea that the pandemic would span multiple years still felt silly, though even the thought of it was scary.
Well, now 2021 is closing, and the cartoon, no doubt intended as a piece of silliness by its creator, has proven prophetic. Sure, we will all remember 2020, with its fear and its sirens and its temporary morgues and its ugly politics. But 2021 has been a pandemic year too, and probably 2022 will be as well. We read this week that Germany has its highest caseload since the pandemic started. Germany is not a vaccine laggard. And Delta has been public enemy number one for a long time now. Surely by now Epsilon and Zeta must be waiting in the wings with some superpower to frustrate our strategies.
I wish I was able to find more consistent and helpful information. I find the statistics of excess deaths to be very compelling, but these are not easy to come by. Counts of deaths attributed to Covid feel flaky to me, because the method by allocation must be subjective and open to political interference. I have a suspicion that excess deaths in much of the western world have converged to a rather low level by now, as vaccines and cures and hospital good practices do their thing. While some think flu fatalities will be especially high this winter, I suspect that the good hygiene practices we have all developed recently will hold it at bay.
But I don’t know. Excess deaths would be an excellent indicator, but only a few sources publish these and even The Economist has reduced the frequency of its excellent science based Covid reports. The data comparing Covid hospitalisation rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated seem to veer all over the place. I sense the official sources are nervous about telling us the truth. They want to keep the pressure up on the unvaccinated, so are reluctant to share news that would disincentivise anyone to get the shot or feed grist to the anti-vaccine misinformation mill.
As a result, I fear the rest of us may be taking precautions that inhibit our lives without giving many health benefits to society. True, most everyday precautions are not onerous. Wearing a mask in the theatre or supermarket is not tough. Frequent hand washing is simply good practice.
But other restrictions are more limiting. International travel rules are still confusing and feel unduly conservative. They start to feel analogous to the security precautions at airports. One person tries (and fails) to blow up a plane with a bomb in his shoe, so the whole of humanity have to sacrifice their time and their dignity every time they want to board a plane.
Another more selfish example is singing. Clearly singing is rather more dangerous than standing or speaking, because we expel air at others (as do fans at sports stadia, but that seems to be OK now, since big money and politician popularity require it). But the tendency to leave cautious practices in place is strong, and I suspect that is what is happening currently in many choirs. Before Covid, we would turn up for practice riddled with flu and nobody would consider that unusual. Now we are all sitting far apart and wearing uncomfortable and musically disastrous masks even if we are pretty sure that nobody within spitting distance is infected, and even if they are, our vaccinated bodies would probably shake off Covid rather easily.
In this environment, I actually think that the US and many European governments have done quite well. Clearly getting vaccines into arms has to be the top priority. Belatedly there is also some attention now to easier self-administered rapid testing. I suppose we have to accept some over cautious practices in the meantime.
In the politicised environment, I admire how Biden and many state and local politicians have handled the vaccine challenge. I still find it bizarre that arguably the single laudable achievement of the Trump presidency, the rapid investment and development of vaccines, has been undermined by his own acolytes.
Biden and others fist focussed on availability. Once this was universal, the message became one of encouragement, and even inducement. Only after these strategies were given time came pressure and mandates, and even then mandates often came with alternatives and plenty of time to comply. As a result, public opinion has swung behind mandates and against amateur medical experts and people equating freedom with their own selfishness. Aaron Rodgers, please shut up. This was always the most powerful incentive: by all means don’t take the vaccine, but don’t expect to be allowed to live a normal life if you hold out.
I wonder if there is one more weapon that by now could reasonably be used. As well as everything else, severe Covid is expensive. Hospitalisation costs a lot of money, and long Covid also harms the productivity of society over an extended period. Who should pay for this? In the US, most of us have health insurance, even if we have to be very careful to continually confirm that we are covered for what we need. So the state and the insurance companies pay most of the bill. But the insurance companies cannot print money, so if their outlays go up they have to increase premiums, paid by employers but ultimately the general public.
Nowadays smokers pay higher premiums for health insurance. People who frequently crash their fancy vehicles or get caught speeding or not wearing seat belts pay higher premiums for car insurance. What about those unvaccinated against Covid? Would it not be reasonable for their choice, a free one, to have a consequence in terms of its cost to society?
Gradually those in authority are putting reasonable pressure on people to get the shot. A health insurance levy would seem to me a fair next step, so long as there are waivers for genuine cases of medical unsuitability. My tolerance for these so-called freedom fighters is by now wearing rather thin. Most people in Africa still cannot get a vaccine for love or money, while here in the complacent rich world others could not be bothered to do their part.
There would also be a nice irony to an insurance penalty. Whose face do we often see on commercials for the State Farm insurance company, or least we used to before that company reconsidered its relationship? Why, it is Aaron Rodgers!
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