If we think Covid-19 is going away, then we will drop our guard and not make essential investments now. Jeremy Farrar, the director of Wellcome, a global health foundation headquartered in London. Indeed, optimism could serve as “one of the biggest obstacles” to making those plans, said Dr. But contingency planning for long-term response is absolutely essential.” Matthew Hepburn, who, since we spoke, has become a special adviser at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
But pulling that mental lever may be just what we need to organize effectively for the very long haul, dramatically improve our pandemic response and embed safeguards into our everyday lives. That SARS-CoV-2 could be with us forever is a dark thought. Anthony Fauci laid it on the line at a White House press briefing this month: “It is going to be very difficult - at least in the foreseeable future and maybe ever - to truly eliminate this highly transmissible virus.” That hoped-for independence now feels like something different: a standoff, with the killer on the other side of a door we’re barricading shut.Įven as cases decline again and vaccination numbers rise, a once-unthinkable idea is breaking through any assumptions that we would vanquish Covid-19. We all know what happened next: Within weeks of those remarks, cases spiked, I.C.U.s overflowed, and we were reminded yet again of Covid’s power to outwit us. And on July 4, albeit with caveats, President Biden announced, “Today, we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” America could lead the world in rolling out vaccines.
We had a president strongly committed to stamping out the virus. In Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, on a cloudless spring day, I pondered what seemed like a miraculous paradigm shift: Apparently, I no longer had to fear that my fellow joggers would kill me, or I them.Īfter 14 months of calculating risks - the hazards of an elevator ride or doom from a grocery store trip - it was suddenly easier to imagine a Covid-free future. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had just signed off on the vaccinated shedding their masks outdoors. On May 14, I went for a jog, amazed at my newfound freedom.
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