Shrugging Off COVID

The Atlantic has another good column that made me relieved to know that I'm not the only one who feels as if everyone else has just stopped paying attention to COVID and stopped taking it seriously -- even after a million U.S. deaths.

Katherine J. Wu's headline is "America is Staring Down Its First So What? Wave", subtitled "The United States could be in for a double whammy: a surge it cares to neither measure nor respond to."

This news doesn't exactly fill one with confidence: "As national concern for COVID withers, the country’s capacity to track the coronavirus is on a decided downswing. Community test sites are closing, and even the enthusiasm for at-home tests seems to be on a serious wane; even though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a new deal on domestic pandemic funding, those patterns could stick. Testing and case reporting are now so 'abysmal' that we’re losing sight of essential transmission trends, says Jessica Malaty Rivera, a research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital. 'It’s so bad that I could never look at the data and make any informed choice.' Testing is how individuals, communities, and experts stay on top of where the virus is and whom it’s impacting; it’s also one of the main bases of the CDC’s new guidance on when to mask up again. Without it, the nation’s ability to forecast whatever wave might come around next is bound to be clouded."

The American people had better wake up!