A gentle reminder: COVID isn’t over.

Published by

Maryann

on

February 11, 2023

Paula Span does it again in today’s New Old Age column, pointedly telling us that it’s our age group who are dying from COVID at the highest rates now. Bafflingly, fewer than half of us have received the bivalent booster, nearly 6 months since it became available.

We recently took a trip to Tucson, AZ, involving 3 flights in each direction, a lot of airport time, and opportunities to see how people in another part of the country are behaving. We can report that most people – whether on planes, in airports, or in shops – are acting like it’s 2019. Few masks are ever in evidence.

So, a plea: Show that you care about all of us. Please get bivalent-boosted if you haven’t. Please wear a mask whenever feasible in public spaces.

2 responses to “A gentle reminder: COVID isn’t over.”

cvillehelen

February 12, 2023

Thanks for this great gentle reminder. I would like to add that I had a mild case of COVID last fall. I had heard from friends that once one had completed five days in quarantine it was OK to resume a “normal “ life. I checked with my PCP who confirmed that statement, with the caveat “…but stay away from immunocompromised people.”

That puzzled me, since give my age group (65-74 and older), many of my friends are immunocompromised. But no one wears a big red “I” on their forehead, and unless you know others well, you may not know that someone is immunocompromised. So I felt that the better part of discretion would be to lay low until I tested negative for the virus— which didn’t happen for another two weeks after that 5-day quarantine.

I’m a firm believer that it is our responsibility to take care of the others in our world. I would never want to be the source of a viral infection if I could take reasonable steps to prevent that, and waiting for that negative status was an easy step to take.

Helen Plaisance hjpasg@me.com

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Reply
1. Maryann
  
  March 28, 2023
  
  So nice someone is reading the blog! Sorry you got the ‘rona, and I hope there are no long term effects. I couldn’t agree more with you that we need to take care of each other. Evidence around us suggests too few people feel that way, and it’s dispiriting.
  
  Reply

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