The Coronavirus Endemic

Two years.

The past two years have been a tragic comedy of life experiences that no one should have to go through in such a short amount of time. Social justice, murder hornets, staffing issues, insurrection, inflation, looting, wildfires, wars... the hits just keep on coming.

And what have we learned from living through all this while a global pandemic is happening? Not much.

I didn't want to inject too much of my opinion and conjecture into these coronavirus posts, but as we're reaching the end of the general public's concern for this virus, it's hard not to want to reflect. I want to clarify again that I am just a normal dude of no medical knowledge or background who happens to read the news and keep up with current events everyday. These are just my thoughts and observations.

Our government and media organizations told us to help "flatten the curve" by quarantining and only going out for essentials while wearing masks. I've never seen so much unity in our country; most, if not all, were following the guidelines, at first. Companies were advertising on TV thanking us for how good of a job we were doing and that we're all in this together. Thanks, multi-million dollar corporations!

Nevermind that this eventually divided our country and world more than ever before.

I've never witnessed so much anger come from people. Masked vs. unmasked, vaxxed vs. anti-vax, family Christmas dinner vs. no family Christmas dinner. We became even more of a society that just wanted to tell people what to do and how to live.

Nevermind that health experts were calling for eye protection from the beginning, too.

Did you know that your eyes contain a similar mucosal lining that exists in your nose and mouth? The same type of membranes that can come in contact with your contaminated hands or infected respiratory droplets hanging around in the air. Even Lord Fauci suggested wearing goggles or eye shields. But I'll tell you what... not a peep from the mask crowd. I assume that a face mask is fine, but goggles or glasses are just a little too inconvenient. *pout, pout* Doctors and nurses wore them. You know who didn't? The general public.

Nevermind that Mrs. DIY's mask was sewn together herself with $8 per yard Harry Potter fabric.

Can you believe that in only the last few months, the federal government and media outlets have finally come out against homemade or cloth masks for actual N95 masks because they actually offer proper protection. Was it just to help make people feel good or something? I don't know, but this one still baffles me. Just for the record, it took the U.S. government almost two years to send out free testing kits and proper masks to the public. Efficiency.

Nevermind that we'll be impacted by this pandemic for years to come.

The economy, anxiety, death, broken social ties, mistrust, sickness, depression... the list goes on. How did we address it? Well, the government threw money at it. Schools made kids sit in front of a webcam and stare at each other's faces all day. Which no one took a step back to consider how it impacts social anxiety, by the way. We didn't prioritize telling people to take vitamins and lose weight. We made fun of people for taking alternative doctor prescribed medications that, as far as I can tell, worked as well for them as the vaccine, or at worst, had no impact whatsoever. We told each other to stay away from our friends and family if we really love them.

I would be fine with all of these things if we took a little time to reflect on our responses. Sure, it would be tough to get over, but it's something we could all come together to work on improving.

Only we're not doing that. We haven't learned. Everyone is done. It's fast-track back to fully re-opening. We're not going back. Here it is folks! Here's that new normal we were all talking about! Happy now? You should be happy now! BE. HAPPY.

It felt like the world, our governments, our leaders, our medical community, everyone was so underprepared for a pandemic like this. We're all at fault, so there's no need for me to play the blame game, but for the love of all that's holy and right in the world, can we please come together and get prepared for when the next one will hit?

As of right now, it's clear that SARS-CoV-2 wasn't a world-ender, but what about all of those other crazy, scary viruses? After at least two years, we still don't know where COVID-19 came from, and we probably never will, but we have ideas, right!? It baffles me to no extent that we're not doing everything we can now to ensure that we don't have to go through something like this again.

If this virus was created/stored/researched in a facility, like the one in Wuhan, let's increase safety and security measures to make sure another one does not get out. If this virus came from bats or some other animal, let's trace it and get it eradicated before another virus gets out. If this virus came from illegal food vendors, get rid of the damn illegal food vendors! Maybe these aren't the right steps, but no one is suggesting anything else.

As you can see from the chart above, the delta and omicron variants swept through our country infecting more than ever before. It's still sweeping through other parts of the world. I don't really know a single person who hasn't had it at this point. Unless you are a hermit living in recluse, you've been exposed to COVID. We've all been sharing stories about when we got it and how bad it was. No two stories have been the same. For example, I had it rough, but the rest of my family was either asymptomatic or had light symptoms. One friend of mine, only her kids got it and she didn't. Another friend, all family members got it, but symptoms were mild. Another friend, no one has ever tested positive. An extended family member was hospitalized and almost died.

It sounds terrible to say, but these recent variants were kind of a blessing. Why? Well, because it could have been a shite sight worse. If you look at the below graph, you can see that COVID deaths did not spike as much. In fact, we stayed under the daily death total experienced in our second wave and that's due to these less extreme variants. According to medical experts, these variants mutated to be more infectious and transmissible while sacrificing more severe symptoms and illness. What if they went the other way? Hey, maybe we should have a plan for that.

People are talking about the endemic of this virus and I do believe we're going to reach true endemic within the next year or so. However, going endemic does not mean we get to sit and rest. I'm not just talking about the possibility of the coronavirus mutating for the worse again. If a Japanese town is hit by a massive tsunami caused by the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded, is that town just going to rebuild again at sea level? If your answer is yes, then you're wrong. If your answer is no, then you are also wrong and are completely missing my point.

Some Japanese towns along the coast that were impacted by the 2011 tsunami built bigger walls. Some of them paved bigger, clearer evacuation paths to higher elevations. Some created special plans to help the elderly and disabled get to safe elevations quicker. They all did things a little differently, but what do they all have in common? They did something. They did the research, rolled their sleeves up a bit, and prepared for the next big one. They're ready with better alerting, supplies, and infrastructure. Is it going to stop the next tsunami from causing pure, utter destruction and taking more lives? Absolutely not, but it is going to save more lives. At the end of the day, shouldn't that be our goal with viral pandemics, too?

I don't want to leave you, the reader, on a depressing note. There are people in this world in science and technology working tirelessly to advance our lives. One example is how mRNA vaccine technology has given us an amazing new way to fight diseases. Diseases that have been plaguing our civilization for decades or centuries now, like heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and HIV. Yet, I'd still like to see our government and medical leaders pay more attention to pandemics, especially while we're all still in one so that we don't have to suffer the consequences of a global shutdown again.