COVID Experts Mostly Back to Normal
Another sign that the pandemic is now endemic.
The WaPo feature “Covid experts today: Eating out, masking less, even booking cruises” is an interesting read. The lede sets it up nicely:
Just like us, they disinfected groceries, left their mail outside for 24 hours, canceled family gatherings, stopped eating out. But today, for the medical experts at the forefront of dealing with the coronavirus that causes covid-19, everyday life has become more normal. All have been vaccinated and boosted, and many have had covid too, a combination that seems to provide more durable protection. While the pandemic isn’t gone, their risk calculations these days look different.
While I never left my mail outside or disinfected groceries, this otherwise describes me well. I’m quadruple vaccinated but finally caught COVID, which presented as a very mild cold, presumably because of all the vaccinations.
Otherwise, the various experts interviewed have slightly lower risk tolerances than I do—many of them still mask in grocery stores, for example—but otherwise are pretty much back to normal. (Even the masking seems a bit performative: “I’d still wear a mask if I were going to be grocery shopping for an extended time when there is a lot of activity in the store. If I jump out of the car and get to the door of the store and realize I’d not remembered to bring a mask when I’m out for a bottle of ketchup, I doubt that I’d double back to the car to get a mask before going into the store” and “I still mask in grocery stores, and I try to remember on airplanes, but sometimes I forget.” I mean, either it’s important to mask or it’s not.) The only one that’s truly still cautious is one who has a relative undergoing cancer treatment living with them; but that makes sense—they have a specific, highly elevated risk factor.
All of them are back to eating in restaurants, although some still try to sit outside when that’s an option.
None other that the one with the cancer patient are still testing or asking visitors to test if they’re asymptomatic.
Most still mask on airplanes—although some do it as much for other viruses as COVID at this point.
They’re all remarkably confident in the vaccines. One interesting data point: “My 88-year-old father, who has been treated with chemo for B-cell lymphoma, has had five covid shots. We had his antibodies tested, and they were sky-high, which is what really persuaded me about how well these mRNA vaccines work.”
Overall, it’s fairly encouraging: they took their own advice to get vaccinated and boosted and they’re now doing what those steps were designed to do—get back to a more or less normal existence. Most of them are medical professionals who have to mask at work—indeed, had to do so before the pandemic—so it’s not shocking that they’re more apt than the general public to wear them in other circumstances.
One thing that concerns me (not from experts but from knowledgeable lay people) is how much they project what was effective in this specific pandemic to all future pandemics. For instance, Kevin Drum had a summary piece where he flatly stated that wiping down surfaces didn’t matter. That is largely true for COVID-19 but we have no way of knowing that ahead of time for the next pandemic.
What I do is pretty much what all my staff though we do have a few people who mask all of the time. I wear a mask when having pt contact or if I feel sick. I dont wear one when I go out though we dont tend to go out to crowded restaurants as we tend towards smaller, “ethnic” places. When I am sick I wear one of the more comfortable N-95s. Probably not going to pass a fit test but not that bad either. I went probably 18 months without a URI when I was masking more often. Since then I have had a couple but it still feels like I am having them less often. Cant prove it but I think probably the effect of everyone at work now masking if they feel sick.
Steve
Eh, I get what they are saying here. As someone who is self-employed, I have the capability to go to stores when they are typically less crowded. Late last week, I was out running errands and found myself near a Trader Joe’s (only a couple of them in NH, so usually I need to plan to get to one) and I decided to pop in and get a few things. BAD IDEA. The place was packed and it felt like half of the people in there were coughing and sneezing–and almost no one was masked. I got out of there as quickly as possible. I wish I had masked before going in, given how crowded it was.
More people–>more risk that someone in there has covid.
Leaving COVID aside, how many people have caught cold or flu recently?
@Jen:
Saturday I had to go to the bank to cash pay orders for the petty cash fund. Weekdays banks open at 9. Weekends, those that open do so at 10. As I had to also go to the office, I delayed my morning trip to the supermarket, so the bank would be open when I was finished.
Instead of arriving at the store between 7 and 8, I arrived at 9:15. It wasn’t crowded, but there were far more people than I’m used to, and few wore masks (and it looks like the mask scarf* is trending this season).
This is not terrible, and I was far more concerned about a strain of cold that’s been going around. But it was a bit disconcerting. I still mkas whenever I leave home, so that was no problem. I keep masks in the car, too, just in case.
*That’s a mask worn around the neck, like a tiny scarf.
So, peer pressure is working even among people who should know better? 😉
I just think it’s worth noting that when reporting on human behavior, you have to look at more than just logical actions. Other explanations might be depressive fatalism at the realization that they cannot protect themselves when their loved ones are not bothering. And we know people rationalize their decisions to make them sound logical.
There were lots of photos about a year ago of a conference of infectious disease specialists with no one masked, which was pretty exciting.
How about “you people are diseased freaks and I don’t want to share the same air with you, plus also, you know, Covid”?
I’ve noticed fewer random strangers trying to be chatty when I’m masked. It’s nice.
I know masks are exciting, but I’m more worried about the effects that the height of the pandemic had on kids — reading and math scores fell in basically every state.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/10/24/naep-report-card-test-scores-reading-math/10552407002/
What’s interesting is that it doesn’t seem very well correlated to school closures. California, Florida and Texas all had similar performance, despite radically different policies. So, we might have a generation of kids with stress related issues affecting them going forward. Or the “open” schools might have had lower value with the teachers sick. Or students might have just missed a lot from getting Covid themselves. Or have long term learning impairments from lingering brain fog (below a self-reported level). Or something else relatively universal.
I don’t think we could have much done better at the time, certainly not with the information we had, but I’m not seeing a lot of efforts to quantify and address the mess that the height of the pandemic had on the kids.
As a semi-old person who probably needs to work for another 10-15 years or so, having a generation of young, eager, energetic dimwits entering my field at the end of my career will make my seasoned knowledge more valuable, but I’m not sure it’s good for America.
(Alabama and Louisiana actually had an increase in 4th grade reading scores, which either shows the fuzziness of the data, or that their normal system of education is worse than nothing… probably the former)
@Gustopher:
I blame regression toward the mean.
I used to get a couple of colds a year, mostly during the school year, where I volunteer with a high school robotics team. I am 75 and wear a mask (KF94) indoors in public. I have gotten all of the vaccines days after I qualified for them (5 total.) I have been on six flights, one river cruise, spent two nights in the hospital (pacemaker implant,) and attended a couple of concerts. I have had one cold since the whole thing started, and have not had COVID-19…and where I live, nobody gives a damn when they see an old guy wearing a mask.
Because of other health issues, I’m one of those people who still masks in public. I’ve had Covid once, and a couple of colds in the last three years. Each time, I caught them from my daughter, a teenager who attends school with a thousand other kids.
But two weeks ago, I neglected to mask one time. Two days later, I was very sick, and this time didn’t catch it from my daughter. Anecdotal, yes, but it reminds me that I still need to be careful about masking.