Registered nurse Orlyn Grace, left, administers a COVID-19 booster vaccination to Jeanie Merriman, right, at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on April 6, 2022, in San Rafael, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
I spent last week in isolation here in Lawrence, tending to my 13-year-old child as he recovered from COVID-19.
Thankfully, he has returned to school, and I avoided getting sick for the time being. Yet coronavirus remains a public health concern, and as Kansas Reflector reporter Anna Kaminski reported late last month , its latest surge coincides with public apathy over vaccinations. A new shot has been released to target the newest variants, yet uptake has been low.
“It is very disappointing to be in such a great nation with such (an) educated, informed population and our vaccination rates against such a severe illness is in the low 15 to 20%,” said Chakshu Gupta, the chief medical officer at Liberty Hospital in Liberty, Missouri, during the University of Kansas Health System medical briefing Aug. 30 .
In the meantime, other concerning illnesses swirl.
During that same briefing, health officials noted an outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas. The state has seen 82 confirmed cases of the disease, nearly twice of last year’s total. A nasty strain of bird flu continues to circulate in cattle and has popped up in a Missouri resident with no known exposure to livestock. A little more than four years ago, we all saw how little prepared the United States was for a pandemic. Today, if anything, we seem less ready.
In retrospect, this makes sense. While COVID-19 has killed more than 7 million people worldwide, it ultimately proved fatal to fewer people than feared. Vaccines and effective treatments made it through the development pipeline in rapid time, blunting its effect on those most at risk. Meanwhile, school and business closures created societal disruption and economic turmoil.
In a time of widespread distrust in institutions, many have decided the pandemic was an overreaction at best and a “ plandemic ” at worst. Those of us who took it seriously then now watch in wonderment as tests, vaccines and treatments go unused.
For that matter, we watch in wonderment as noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. somehow seized a national spotlight for his quixotic presidential run.
If the latest strain of bird flu mutates to travel easily between humans, what then? If COVID-19 becomes more virulent, what then? If illnesses previously kept in check by vaccines — measles and polio, for example — spread anew, what then? All of these hypothetical cases could lead to massive loss of life, and nothing I’ve seen suggests that Kansans or Americans would sacrifice much of anything to prevent them.
I know how a subset of readers will react to this column.
They will complain about me continuing to write about COVID-19. They will raise the specter of lockdowns and school closures. They will accuse me of frightening or belittling those who either ignored the pandemic completely to tried treating infections with horse dewormer . They will do so secure in the knowledge that the vast majority of people prefer to forget the worst of 2020-2021 and therefore give them a pass.
But just because a bad thing happened and we want to move doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The virus is real . The illnesses and deaths and long COVID cases are real. We still grapple with the individual and collective consequences. We can try to force these memories into a little box, distorting them in the process, or we can take concrete steps to build a healthier nation. I know which alternative I prefer.
“There is a lot of misinformation out there,” Gupta said later in the briefing. “I would encourage you to get the information from reliable, reputable sources. Talk to your health care providers. They have experience and the right information. … Just practice commonsense protective measures to save yourself, your family and your communities from these dreadful infections.”
To use a term from faith rather than science: Preach it. If you do just one thing after reading this column, please go to your doctor or pharmacy for an updated dose of the COVID-19 shot . It is proven safe and effective. It’s the least you can do until the next pandemic arrives.
As it will.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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