https://archive.ph/k8DaN

Like so many others, we are living with COVID. The virus isn’t going anywhere, but how safely we live with it has changed dramatically. Most Americans have resumed the full range of their pre-pandemic activities — concerts, parties, summer camps, and family events. But with the virus still circulating, many who have gone back to pre-pandemic life still worry if they are safe.

It makes sense to be wary. We have lived with these risk assessments and daily decisions for almost four years. And yet we are in a much different, much better place. We can protect ourselves with vaccines, which remain free and widely available. Treatments like Paxlovid are more accessible than ever. Innovative research continues, with an updated vaccine expected in the fall that will better target the circulating variant. Tests are available for those who still want to use testing, and surveillance, through wastewater and genomic sequencing, is much better than it used to be. Add in large investments in improving indoor air quality and the infrastructure to respond more effectively to future outbreaks and things are much better.

That is huge fucking stretch about surveillance being "much better". Imagine having the audacity to say we can track waves better when we basically don't even fucking test for COVID anymore. And I've heard that the wastewater can be unreliable too because many sites often don't report, they report irregularly, etc. And I'm honestly not sure, but is there anything stopping us from getting a variant that shows up a lot less in human waste and makes levels of transmission seem lower than they actually are?

And we don't even know how effective the next vaccine will be yet. Hasn't every vaccine so far has gone down in efficacy significantly after a few months? Will the variant the vaccine targets even be dominant anymore by the time they're rolled out? Cuz historically, we've always played catch-up with the vaccines, because something else becomes a dominant variant as a result of letting it rip in perpetuity. And most people are probably about a year removed from their last vaccine, if not longer. Most people didn't even get the most recent booster here in the US. Like sure, the vaccines are still good to get, if nothing else, to prevent severe illness and death. And there have been a shit ton of people who have been "fully vaccinated" and still died. But that's without even acknowledging long COVID. And the current vaccines have never been very effective at preventing transmission. And the vaccine seems to only slightly reduce the chance of getting long COVID, at best. The best way to not get long COVID, sadly, is still to not get COVID in the first place.

The stuff about investing in indoor air quality seems like pure hopium, like where's the demand? It absolutely should be done and every public building should be mandated with upgraded ventilation and it should be something subsidized by the government (as if this shithole country would ever invest in domestic infrastructure lmao), but I haven't heard anything about ambitious plans to do stuff like that. The people who are actually getting these upgrades are usually very privileged people who belong to communities like Ashish Jha's: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/09/how-ashish-jha-rochelle-walensky-newton-ma-protect-their-children-from-covid-but-not-yours.html

The truth is that we can now prevent nearly every COVID death. People who are up to date on their vaccines and get treated when infected rarely get seriously ill. Even for the vulnerable like my parents, who are in their 80s, vaccines coupled with treatments provide a very high degree of protection against serious illness. This is also true for most immunocompromised individuals. The fact is, now a few basic steps mean you can ignore COVID safely — and get back to doing things that matter, even with COVID still around. Think of these safety measures like the routine check-ups that keep your car safe to drive.

Fuck you, you detestable piece of shit. Tell that to the 40,000+ people who have died from COVID this year in the US, which is almost certainly a significant undercount. Even if that is below the worst peaks of the pandemic, that is still an unfathomable number of people who have died. So saying "you can prevent nearly every COVID death" is a bold-faced lie. And many people who aren't up to date on vaccines are underserved and have bad access to vaccines and treatment/access to stuff like Paxlovid. And to say that "you can ignore COVID safely"--yeah, we noticed you trying really hard to manufacture that consent ever since you took that job, you veritable fuckhead!

What about long COVID? The evidence here is reassuring as well. Those who are up to date on their vaccines are far less likely to get long COVID, and when they do, it tends to be shorter-lived and less severe. And treatments may help reduce it too. For now, there is no foolproof way of avoiding long COVID short of avoiding infections altogether. But you can substantially reduce your risk with vaccines and, likely, treatments.

Very telling that he pooh-poohs the seriousness of long COVID by saying that there are treatments to help reduce long COVID and then goes on to list zero of them.

People often ask how we will know the pandemic is over. There is no dramatic declaration of victory over this new and deadly virus that reshaped our lives for so many years.

Sure never stopped your dogshit administration from dramatically declaring victory though, lmao

I know I'm just screaming into the void and none of this shit actually surprises me, but I fucking hate all of these scum of the earth minimizers with every fiber of my being.