![]() ![]() And this should happen soon the White House says that shortages will end in the coming weeks. If there were sufficient supply, Tallaj told me, his team could be giving out 40,000 doses every day. “If we open 3,000 appointments, they will immediately fill,” says Ramon Tallaj, a physician who oversees clinical care in underserved communities across New York City. This month, New Yorkers lined up outside Yankee Stadium throughout the night at a makeshift 24/7 vaccination site, until the supply ran out. One-quarter of all Americans have now received at least one shot, and that number is racing up. ![]() It’s the disease as it will be experienced in the months and years to come: with new variants of the virus, new public policies and health behaviors, various degrees of immune memory, and-most important-a cavalcade of new vaccines. And, of course, our lifestyles have changed, as have social standards, medical systems, and public-health programs.ĬOVID-21 is the product of all these changes in aggregate. Our immune systems have changed as well, as a result of fending off infections. What began as one coronavirus has infected well over 100 million people and evolved into new forms that appear to transmit more readily and infect us in subtly different ways. In the case of COVID, all three are now different than they were in 2020. Pathogens change, hosts change, and environments change. What lies ahead is COVID-21.ĭiseases are not static things. It’s worth considering a new way of thinking about the period of the pandemic now ahead of us-one that leads us neither to complacency nor to paralyzing despair. Instead we’re facing a new set of challenges, and they are not easily comparable to what has come before. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic may drag on for years, but the nightmare of last year-of an entirely new viral illness, emerging in a specific sociopolitical context-is behind us. Tests are widely available, and there are better treatments for the disease. Many health-care workers are vaccinated, and the need to “flatten the curve” is in the past. It’s also true that much of what defined the COVID-19 crisis at its worst is no longer an issue. Not only because, as Anthony Fauci told me recently, the most honest answer is “We just don’t know.” The inability to give a definitive answer is contributing to misperception of risk, conflating better with good enough. When, exactly, will we reach a point that could be considered a finish line? It’s the natural question, but I think it’s a counterproductive one. The pervasive sense is that we can’t wait forever for the pandemic to end. ![]() This week, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered New York City employees back to work, regardless of their vaccination status, while case counts in the city are on a high plateau. Businesses are opening despite a thousand American deaths a day. There are no makeshift morgues in the streets. In the United States, an acute, terrifying catastrophe has given way to the monotony of lowered expectations. The pandemic today is almost unrecognizably different. The possibility that millions would die was real but incomprehensible. Few of us knew that COVID-19 symptoms could last for months, that you might lose your sense of smell, or that your toes might break out in purple lesions. We disinfected mail but didn’t wear masks. This time last year, Americans were just going into lockdown-presumably for two weeks-to protect themselves from a mysterious but deadly virus. Trying to remember March 2020 feels like sticking your head into a parallel universe. ![]()
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