These stories are becoming more common:
An Alabama man just days away from his 74th birthday died last week after 43 hospitals in three states couldn’t accept him due to overfilled ICUs. Now his family is encouraging people to get vaccinated. Ray Martin DeMonia suffered a cardiac event last week, and after his family tried to get him a bed at a variety of hospitals, staff at an Alabama hospital managed to find him a one at a Mississippi hospital—almost 200 miles from his home. “In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID related emergencies,” his family wrote in his obituary. “He would not want any other family to go through what his did.”
In Alabama, there were 60 more patients than there were ICUs as of Thursday. Over half were positive with COVID-19, according to USA Today—a deadly example of the Delta variant’s rise.
And yet, it seems that many in media think that while this is a problem, it’s equally a problem that people in blue states are being “overly concerned” about COVID.
Here’s an academic tweeting about his article in the NY Times, ostensibly about our “goals” with COVID but really is a typical “both-sides” article, drawing an equivalence between people who are refusing to get vaccinated people who are insisting on keeping masks and other mitigation strategies in place even though they have a high vaccination rate.
The fact that one group is killing people and the other is simply telling people to wear a mask for a while longer doesn’t seem to enter into this conversation.
This article I wrote w @jenkinshelen focused on forcing ourselves to ask a hard question: “What are our goals?”
We used masks as one example, but could’ve used others
In this thread I’ll use Yale and their 99% vaxxed to ask “What are Yale’s goals?”
First, in our article we point out that if ‘zero covid’ is the goal, one set of polices follow. If drastically reducing severe disease, another.
And that failing to state our goals is creating a lot of confusion, and why expert advice can be so different and conflicting.👇
Why focus on Yale? ICYMI, lots of stories/tweets this weekend about their 99% vax rate and low cases.
Yale is 99% vaxxed, yet maintaining their strict masks/testing/limited gatherings.
I think it’s a fair question for them, and others – what is the goal they are trying to achieve?
Appears to be ‘zero covid’ on campus, which is fine if that’s their goal, it’s just unstated.
4/n
Why important to state the goal? So people know what they’re working towards. Not stating the goal can erode trust, which breaks down effectiveness of the controls.
And is there an off-ramp? Not clear.
5/n
If Yale has all of these controls in place now, even w 99% vaxxed and low cases and spread, are they essentially saying – without saying it – that their goal is zero cases, and may not have a logical off-ramp?
(What @jenkinshelen and I wrote as “sleepwalking” into policy)
I know people on this site don’t like having this conversation, but these questions are happening on campuses right now and need to be answered very soon.
**And the questions aren’t coming from ‘anti-maskers’ or some easy to write-off ‘fringe’ group**
(The positive notes I’ve gotten about our article from smart, balanced people I greatly respect is yet another reminder that what happens on twitter is not the real-world.)
Back to Yale. Maybe Yale’s goal is not ‘zero covid’. Maybe it’s something else. (Again, we don’t know because they haven’t told us.)
What might their policy be?
Maybe Yale’s goal is ‘all controls until x happens’, which is also fine, but they never define what ‘x’ is.
Is it “99% vax + all controls” until:
-Cases drop on campus? Or maybe CT? or US? (and to what level?)
-or maybe test (+) hits some threshold?
-or 100% vax on campus?-or maybe they’re waiting for 80% vax in CT? or some other %?
-or no ongoing spread on campus?
-or local hospitalizations hit some level?
-or maybe they’re tracking deaths?
-or “wait to see what our peers do”?
-or….??Because they haven’t defined their ‘off ramp’ goal, the likeliest end game is the end of controls will happen when eventual backlash hits from faculty/students/parents.
“We kept these controls in place until we caved to public pressure” is a poor strategy.
Much stronger to say: “We’re waiting til x”, and then define, and defend, what ‘x’ is. Then collectively work toward that goal.
But, whatever your goal is, it’s past due for everyone to be transparent about their goals or it will lead to pushback and *confusion*
And, again, if you think pushback on this is coming from unreasonable people, you haven’t been plugged in to the conversations swirling off twitter.
This chorus will grow in the coming weeks/months… from very reasonable people.
This isn’t just about Yale, of course, this could be asked of Harvard where I am, or any other university.
It’s also being asked at businesses. “If 99% of employees vaxxed in an office, still need controls in place?”
The answer depends on the goal. Eliminate any and all spread in the office? Or reduce risk of a severe outcome to levels of risk that were previously ‘acceptable’ in society?
In our article, we also took this more broad – what is the country’s goal?
“If the goal is zero spread, which we think is not realistic, then the country would need to keep many of the most restrictive measures in place”
We noted that keeping the most restrictive measures in place is “an approach that has serious public health consequences of its own.”
(This last reality has been ignored all too often)
We also note that “If the goal is to minimize severe disease, some states with high vaccination rates might already be there.”
And that “Low-vaccination states would still have work to do before loosening restrictions.”
But, “Treating the country as a whole just doesn’t make sense right now because of the widespread differences in vaccination rates.”
Big picture: whether Yale, businesses, the country as a whole…
“We shouldn’t let ourselves off the hook with “easy” decisions today. At some point, the country needs to have an honest conversation with itself about what our goals really are.”
Originally tweeted by Joseph Allen (@j_g_allen) on September 12, 2021.
As I said. It’s a “both sides” article pretending to be about how we need to “make a decision about what we want.” Most of us would like to live — and eventually go back to some semblance of normal life. And we’d also like to spare vulnerable people from being exposed as much as possible and deny the virus the ability to mutate into something that makes the vaccines ineffective.
I might understand this insistence that the “overly cautious” are being irrational if it weren’t for the fact that COVID has twice now, first with the Alpha and now with Delta spread all over the country. We may see this winter that the places with high vaccination rates, notably the northeast and the west coast, don’t have the terrible outbreaks of Delta that we have seen in the south and what looks like a coming outbreak in the midwest. That will be very valuable information. And once kids are cleared for vaccinations a lot of parents are going to feel more confident that their communities can relax some of their mitigation measures.
But people move around in this country and the virus is global. It’s not as if your “region” is totally secure. Unless the vast majority of the country is vaccinated, which doesn’t seem to be happening, it’s understandable that people would still be cautious. They’ll relax once we know more and feel secure that these assumptions about spread are correct. It’s still early days.
And let’s face it, the other problem is the real issue. The “under-concerned” are killing people. Let’s keep this in perspective.
Update: Read this piece by Parker Molloy about this “both sides” analysis from last spring. Even with the massive deaths we’ve seen from Delta, they are still doing it.