Since the start of the pandemic three years ago the United States had embraced a policy of allowing widespread infection to occur in low-risk groups, like young people. This has resulted in the highest death toll of any country in the world with well over one million deaths. The hope in all this mass infection was that the country might develop herd immunity. However herd immunity is impossible since the virus keeps mutating into variants that break through past waning immunity from past infection and vaccination.
The vast trouble with this mass infection strategy is that children are getting very sick and repeat infections are resulting in worst outcomes. Over 96% of children have been infected in our country so far and those kids then infect their parents and grand parents. Children are the primary way the virus is burning through society.
The United States is riding on a plateau of about 500 deaths a day due to COVID-19. That has become the new normal. At the start of the pandemic 500 deaths a day would have been unheard of, but after experiencing spikes or deaths in the thousands, 500 deaths a day seems low in comparison. Americans want to wish the virus away while taking no basic safety precautions. Wishful thinking and ignorance is not a public health solution.
Pandemic fatigue has become pandemic burn out and most people have given up all hope. The only way they can cope is to pretend that the pandemic is over. All evidence to the contrary will be ignored for the sake of imagining that life has returned to normal.
The 45th president knew the virus was airborne and highly infectious. Despite this he downplayed the potential dangers. The 46th president isn’t much better, in that he publicly proclaimed the pandemic is over while thousands or people needlessly die every week. Gaslighting the public and convincing them that mass infection is in their best interest seems to be the one thing that straddles party lines.