<“Now, in addition to caseloads, the guidance also will consider hospitalizations, current beds occupied by COVID patients and hospital capacity.”
Follow the science.>
As a scientist, I always follow the science.
I also carefully read the fine print.
The concern of the public health authorities, from the beginning of the pandemic, has been to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed with patients. They are looking at hospitalizations the way an engineer would look at a dam that is in danger of being overtopped by flooding of the artificial lake it’s holding back.
The authorities are not concerned with weak to moderate infections that do not bring people to hospitals. However, this is not trivial to me. my brother and sister and a good friend have all had verified “breakthrough” Covid infections after being fully vaccinated and boosted. Jeff only had a day of feeling unwell since the infection occurred a couple of weeks after booster, so his immune system was fully triggered. My sister and friend felt quite sick for a week but not bad enough to go to the hospital. I don’t want to get that sick.
I am over age 65. I received my booster in October 2021. I have asthma and a long history of nasty bacterial lung infections secondary to mild virus infections. I don’t have a spleen so I’m missing part of my immune system.
I report my health status to two different research programs, “Outbreaks near me” and “ZOE,” which has 4.7 million contributors. The statistics are based on these large voluntary population studies, which are good data. (Self-selected to be more tech-savvy than average.) Also data from public health sources, such as the age of the population and frequency of hospitalization.
https://covid.joinzoe.com/us-2
Millions of people will be doing risk-benefit analyses which are balanced against the annoyance of masking and the desire to get back to normal. Most people are highly emotional rather than rational. Many unvaccinated people will be unmasked.
Where does the science lead me, given my individual risk factors?
I would love to go back to my exercise classes at the YMCA when my county shows low risk (it’s currently high)… but would I be safe? The CDC recommendations are based on the availability of hospital beds. I don’t want to get sick, even if I don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital.
What do you think?
Wendy