Hi
The first three editions (this is #2) of the Copeland’s Corner blog come out on Wednesdays and will be sent to everyone on Brian’s mailing list. After that, it will only go to those who SPECIFICALLY SIGN UP FOR IT. To subscribe for free, go to briancopeland.substack.com.
Whether you believe it or not, we are in the middle of a Covid surge. A bad one. The vaccine resistant variant BA.5 is raging through the country. While most people, including local and state governments, are acting like the virus is no longer a threat, viral experts are saying that BA.5 is the worst version of the virus yet.
You can get BA.5 if you’re double vaccinated and double boosted. You can get it if you’ve already had Covid last winter or even last spring. And yes, you can get it if you’re young and healthy.
The BA.5 variant is spreading like wildfire. The CDC estimates that there are one million new infections a day in this country. Experts can’t get an exact number of infections because so many of us are using home tests and those results aren’t reported. What we do know with certainty is that hospitalizations are rising. They
are up 23% in just the last two weeks. 350-400 people a day are dying from BA.5 as it’s become the primary variant sweeping the country. That’s more daily deaths than those from breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. We know that while some people who’ve been infected might just get sniffles and a sore throat, others (even the “young and healthy”) will spend weeks in bed trying to recover.
Despite this, I see people everywhere who have simply decided that they’re burnt out on Covid so, they’re just going to act as though it doesn’t exist. They’re not wearing masks. They aren’t social distancing and they’re hanging out in crowds. They are spending time with unmasked strangers in places with no ventilation. It’s
frustrating to see. Especially with young people. I’ve had arguments with my own millennial children about this and they, like their friends, just don’t want to hear it.
“Everybody’s going to get it at some point,” they say. “It’s not that bad.”
They don’t want to hear about the studies indicating that those who’ve been infected with Covid have an elevated risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes a year after they’ve stopped feeling sick. They don’t want to hear about the studies that suggest that Covid infection may have long term ramifications for their immune systems that
could make it harder to fight off cancers and other diseases in the years to come. They don’t want to hear that the more this virus spreads, the more vaccine resistant mutations we’ll see. They don’t want to hear that going to a crowded club with their friends and no masks is not only dangerous, but potentially deadly. I’m just being Chicken Little raving about the sky falling.
City and state governments around the country are either willfully ignorant or cowardly in dealing with this latest onslaught. With the exception of Los Angeles, which is considering reinstating a mask mandate, and a brief resumption of an indoor mask requirement in Alameda County here in the Bay Area, most governments are making
“suggestions” on how to avoid getting sick when what they need to do is issue mandates that will stop the spread. Red states have made fighting Covid political (“Wearing a mask violates my personal freedom!” ), while blue state officials fear the wrath of their citizenry if they enact requirements that will contain BA.5 as they did with the initial virus. That leaves it up to us.
Not taking the appropriate precautions right now is not only dangerous, but selfish. I have friends suffering from cancer and other autoimmune diseases who might literally die if they catch this variant because their bodies can’t fight off the infection. Are their lives worth less than your desire to go unmasked at the grocery store
because it’s inconvenient and it fogs up your glasses?
THIS IS NOT OVER. PLEASE STOP ACTING LIKE IT IS.
Brian Copeland
The first three editions of the Copeland’s Corner blog come out on Wednesdays and will be sent to everyone on Brian’s mailing list. After that, it will only go to those who SPECIFICALLY SIGN UP FOR IT. To subscribe for free, go to briancopeland.substack.com.