Covid Update: What is that light at the end of the tunnel?
First the bad news. Covid is everywhere right now. Back in August we had 8 positive cases per day per 100,000 population. At that time Mississippi was having a crisis with 120 cases/day/100,000 people, a rate I had calculated would overwhelm our county’s hospitals. In September our case rate had gone up to 20. Today in Yuma County we are up to 87, and this number does not include the people who choose not to get tested or do home tests that don’t get reported to the state. Recently, over half the covid tests run in Wray have been positive. The state of Colorado is at 194. Alabama is testing positive at 387 cases/day/100,000 population.
The possible good news. Hospitals should be absolutely overwhelmed and sick people should be spilling out into the streets. Some hospitals in the country are in crisis, but many are managing. The 12 hospitals in the University of Colorado Hospital system have seen a peak in covid hospitalizations about equal to the peak seen in January of 2021. If the rate of serious illness with covid infection was the same as it was a year ago we should be seeing twice, three time, or five times the number of hospitalizations. Right now two thirds of the patients in the University of Colorado hospital system with Covid are in the hospital for something else, and just happened to have a positive Covid test. Could this be the beginning of the end of the pandemic? The light at the end of the tunnel? A lower percentage of Covid infected people may be getting seriously sick because the OImicron variant may be less virulent or because more people are vaccinated or have already had Covid once. It could be that our hospitals are about to get slammed beyond belief in about a week and that light at the end of this damn tunnel may be an oncoming train, but I am hoping, hoping…
No matter what the light at the end of this tunnel turns out to be, remember, Covid is all around us right now. Please take care, especially if you are in a high risk group. The relief of warmer weather will be coming soon. Even more tragic are the battle casualties that occur while the leaders of countries are meeting to negotiate the end of the war. If you haven’t had Covid in the last 3 months, and you are old, I highly recommend you get vaccinated. Old can mean over 30, or if you feel “old”, or if you are older than Tom Brady. After over a year of vaccinating millions of people the covid vaccines have not shown any surprising serious complications, and are safe beyond reasonable doubt. If you have any medical problems, are more than 10- 15 pounds overweight, are pregnant, a healthcare worker or have frequent close contact with someone in a high risk group, I highly recommend getting vaccinated with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. For these high risk people, I would recommend the vaccine even if the risk of severe side effects such as anaphylaxis and myocarditis were ten times what I believe the risk to be.
Pregnant women are at higher risk of serious complications if they catch covid in the second half of their pregnancy. I would usually recommend pregnant women get the Covid vaccine at the end of the first trimester not because there is any risk of vaccinating at any time during pregnancy, but because naturally about 15% of pregnancies miscarry, usually in the first trimester. Aklthough there has been no evidence that the Covid vaccine causes miscarriage, it would be hard to convince a woman who miscarried after receiving the Covid vaccine that the vaccine did not cause the pregnancy loss.
If you are not in a high risk group, there are a lot of other reasons to get vaccinated. It is less common, but young people also get seriously sick from Covid. Over 1000 children under 18, many with underlying medical conditions, have died so far from complications of Covid in the United States. Like H1N1 influenza, I believe Covid will be around for years to come and the vaccine appears to be safe enough that why not give yourself the chance of having some protection against serious illness in the future? Even more than the inconvenience of catching the common cold, catching Covid is a significant inconvenience due to restrictions and quarantines. You might be more likely to choose to get vaccinated if you haven’t been infected yet, if you believe in vaccines, if you want to avoid the nuisance, if you have a future event like an athletic competition, wedding or family vacation you really want to attend, or feel like it is for the good of the community. You might be less likely to choose to get vaccinated if you already had covid, live an isolated existence without human contact, or remain skeptical of the safety of the vaccine. Besides the information I have researched on the vaccine from trusted sources, I believe the vaccine to be safe because I haven’t seen serious complications in Wray after over a year. My wife and I and my 19 and 16 year old sons are vaccinated. There is no higher endorsement for the vaccine that I can give.