NY Times Sounds The Alarm About U.S. Returning to Normal

NY Times Sounds The Alarm About U.S. Returning to Normal

The number of U.S. COVID-19 cases has fallen 77% in the past six weeks, likely a mixture of acquired immunity and vaccinations.

In fact, here is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) most recent graph charting the number of cases in this country.

Now, most people would welcome this news. But The New York Times delved as deeply as it could to find something to be “alarmed” about regarding the plunge in the case number.

The New York Times: U.S. Is Edging Toward Normal, Alarming Some Officials.https://t.co/BNC5RxXv9P

via @GoogleNews

— TeeMichelle (@TeeMichelle57) March 2, 2021

There is no silver lining that can’t be darkened when viewed through the prism of progressive ideology.

The positive signs come with caveats. Though the national statistics have improved drastically since January, they have plateaued in the last week or so, and the United States is still reporting more than 65,000 new cases a day on average — comparable to the peak of last summer’s surge, according to a New York Times database. The country is still averaging more than 2,000 deaths per day, though deaths are a lagging indicator because it can take weeks for patients to die.

New, more contagious variants of the virus are circulating in the country, with the potential to push case counts upward again. Testing has fallen 30 percent in recent weeks, leaving experts worried about how quickly new outbreaks will be known. And millions of Americans are still waiting to be vaccinated.

Given all that, some experts worry that the reopenings are coming a bit too soon.

“We’re, hopefully, in between what I hope will be the last big wave, and the beginning of the period where I hope Covid will become very uncommon,” said Robert Horsburgh, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health. “But we don’t know that. I’ve been advocating for us to just hang tight for four to six more weeks.”

Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see why there is alarm among entities that have become empowered through pandemic policies.

Meanwhile, CDC officials are warning that progress with Covid-19 could be wiped out by variants, even though vaccines would likely lessen the severity of an infection, if not outright prevent it (similar to flu vaccines and their variants).

“Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

…Walensky also called out states that were easing up on Covid-19 safety mandates.

“I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19,” she said.

“Please stay strong in your conviction. Continue wearing your well-fitting mask and taking the other public health prevention actions that we know work,” Walensky added.

On the other hand, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the 23rd commissioner of Food and Drugs and noted medical policy expert, believes that while we won’t achieve full herd immunity by April as had been suggested by another expert, cases will steadily decline through the spring and summer.

After factoring in vaccination data, Gottlieb estimated about 40% of U.S. residents right now have antibodies from prior infection or inoculation — a percentage that will rise as more people are vaccinated. According to the CDC, 43.6 million Americans who have received at least one dose of the two-shot Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer since they received emergency emergency use authorization from the FDA in December.

“When you’re getting to 40% or 50% of the population with some form of protective immunity, you don’t have herd immunity but you have enough immunity in the population that this [virus] just doesn’t transfer as readily,” Gottlieb said

President Donald Trump’s approach is finally getting a more positive reassessment from many sources, summarized by conservative pundit Byron York.

…President Trump pushed and cajoled and threw money at vaccine makers in the form of Operation Warp Speed. Critics scoffed at Trump’s vow to have a vaccine in record time, before the end of 2020. But he did just that. “It’s just breathtaking that that got done in 11 months from when we first knew about this virus,” National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins told Axios last week. “It is at least five years faster than it has ever been done before.”

James Hamblin, a doctor who writes on the virus for The Atlantic, tweeted, “It is honestly beyond my wildest expectations that we’d have three extremely effective vaccines a year into the pandemic.”

…The point is not that Donald Trump and the United States led the world in handling the pandemic crisis. The point is that, all things considered, the U.S. slogged through an extraordinarily difficult period in a way that was roughly similar to many other advanced nations. And realizing that, it’s important to remember the frenzied, hysterical, and hostile media coverage of the Trump administration during the virus’s worst days. It was just that — frenzied and hysterical and hostile. It gave Americans an unbalanced picture of what was happening. Now, perhaps, with the perspective of some time and a new president, people will be able to see that.

Those vaccines, paired with acquired immunity, may save us from another year of CDC COVID insanity.

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