Vaccines & Variants

Just like watching things shut down early last year, we're now seeing places roll out vaccine mandates one by one. Federal workers are going to be required to be vaccinated; you'll need to prove vaccination to eat in restaurants in New York City; our local school board voted unanimously to require teachers to be vaccinated this school year; and yesterday my own employer announced that employees needed to have record of their vaccination on file. Of course, the alternative isn't that you lose your job, as antivaxxers would have you believe. If you're not vaccinated, in most cases, you're just required to wear a mask and undergo regular COVID tests. While these types of requirements might push a few holdouts over the edge to be vaccinated (many people who weren't vaccinated said they wouldn't get it "unless required"), it's adding fuel to the fire of antivaxxers who assert this whole virus situation is just an attempt at "control," and will probably make them dig their heels in further.

A majority of Americans now support returning to a mask mandates, which are reappearing piecemeal, as are plans for going back to school (some districts are offering a virtual option, others are planning for everything to be in person). The governor of Arkansas now regrets signing an anti-mask order into law, as COVID cases surge in his state. The President told governors of states like Texas and Florida, with surging cases, to help or get out of the way (i.e. don't ban things that will help, like wearing masks). 

Last night I felt anxiety for the first time like I had back in the beginning of 2020 when I couldn't sleep or eat, thinking about the Delta variant and all the other potential variants that are just making everything futile.

Even though everyone is talking about variants Delta, and Delta Plus, and now finally vaccine-resistant Lambda is getting mentions, I prefer the outlook of this article. The goal of a virus is to spread as much as possible - if it kills its hosts, it can't do that (see Ebola: it's super dangerous, but doesn't usually spread that far because people die before they have the chance to infect too many others.) This article theorizes that COVID will become more transmissible but less severe (more like the common cold, as we've been hearing), both due to mutation and increasing levels of immunity from vaccination and previous infections.