The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on “Why It Feels Like Everyone You Know Is Getting Covid-19.” It contained several worrisome observations.
It cited “a seven-day average of more than 26,000 people hospitalized with COVID in late December, about double the number two months earlier.” It noted that although the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are far lower than during the previous two winters, “It remains a disruptive and rapidly spreading illness.”
Those were understatements. Within hours after the article appeared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released updated December numbers significantly worse. During the week from Dec. 24 to Dec. 30, COVID hospitalizations were up 20.4 percent over the previous week, with almost 35,000 hospitalizations. COVID deaths were up 12.5 percent from the last week. And the curves were trending upward, with the full effects of holiday super-spreader events not evident.
None of this is surprising, given that only 19 percent of eligible people have gotten the most recent COVID vaccine booster and that masking is almost non-existent even in high-risk situations such as airports, airplanes, trains, theaters and other gathering places.
Although the numbers are not as bad as they were in previous winters, the fact remains that with appropriate precautions, many COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths are preventable.
Another point on the subject of avoidance of bad outcomes of COVID infection is the low frequency of physicians prescribing the drug Paxlovid for people who become infected. Paxlovid prevents the COVID virus from replicating and thereby reduces the risk of an infection, giving rise to the persistence of signs and symptoms after the acute infection has passed — that is, “long COVID.”
The results of a study in March found that among the 282,000 people in the study who were eligible for Paxlovid, the drug reduced the incidence of long COVID by 26 percent.
However, physicians have been underprescribing Paxlovid because they don’t know much about it (and about long COVID) and because it interacts negatively with numerous drugs. However, these interactions can usually be managed by briefly stopping or changing the dose of the other drug.
Finally, officials at the top of the public health food chain — including the surgeon general, Health and Human Services secretary, and the directors of CDC and the Food and Drug Administration — have not been visibly and loudly urging Americans to take appropriate precautions.
A public health bonus of more responsible behavior — namely, vaccination and masking in high-risk situations — would be the suppression of the two serious respiratory infections circulating at high levels: flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Only 45 percent of adults have been vaccinated against the flu this season, and at least 10 million people in the United States have gotten the flu, resulting in 110,000 hospitalizations and 6,500 deaths. RSV vaccination rates have been even more dismal, with only about 18 percent of adults over 60 getting an RSV shot.
Mask mandates for staff and patients in healthcare facilities are finally beginning to be reinstated, but these efforts are too little, too late for the nation.
As Benjamin Franklin counseled in 1736, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
