The COVID Digest, 28Aug2022

Ongoing concern for K-12 aged kids

Hello readers! First, I’d like to point out to you that the federal government is about to end its free COVID-19 test program. If you have not already ordered the maximum for your household, it’s a good idea to do so now through the US Postal Service.

I’ve spent a lot of time in anger and frustration at the Biden Administration’s response to COVID-19 that has resulted in more deaths than the previous administration. The list of decisions that haven’t made sense is long. But pandemics of the past eventually did end, with ever shrinking subsequent waves until a disease faded into the background (endemic - we aren’t there yet). I have to think that the latest decisions to abandon all pretense of trying to prevent disease and protect the vulnerable must have included a meeting where they looked at the vaccination rates, the mountain of infections that happened with Omicron and they threw their hands up and thought their chances were pretty good that there was so much infection, so much death, that *surely* this pandemic was going to decline. It’s a gamble, to be sure. But so far it is playing out in their favor. I think it would be lovely for this to be true, though I’m holding judgment until we get through the winter, which has historically always been worse than summer waves. And I certainly want this pandemic to end. But I don’t think letting the virus chew through our communities as a strategy for ending the pandemic is one that we should celebrate or ever replicate again.

There’s been a lot of damage to public health infrastructure over the past several years and morale is low among the workforce. This week the CDC Director announced a new accountability initiative, which overlooks her own missteps but throws the agency rank and file under the bus. That’s not to say that there aren’t things that could improve, but the politicization of the agency’s response has happened at the direction of political appointees, specifically the CDC Director. The employees and contractors at CDC didn’t politicize the response or curtail isolation guidance at the behest of big companies. This is sure to do further harm to morale of the public health workforce. I don’t think accountability happens without also acknowledging the degree to which political interference has harmed public trust in public health. I think an important and authentic first step in that direction would be for Dr. Walensky to step down and for reform at the agency to include strategies that reduce political interference, similar to what is done for the FBI.