Nicole Saphier, MD, is a Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, and the bestselling author of Panic Attack. Their opinions are their own and do not reflect those of their employers.
President Joe Biden has joined the overwhelming majority of Americans who have tested positive for COVID.
Our fully vaccinated, twice-boosted, 79-year-old President is said to have “very mild symptoms” and we all wish him the best.
His illness is also emerging as the number of COVID cases increases in some parts of the country.
How should we react?
Fortunately, the most draconian lockdown measures of the past have been abandoned, but absurdly extreme measures continue to be used.
Children attending summer classes at San Diego public schools are now being forced to wear face masks indoors or be locked out of the classroom.
You can learn virtually – an absurd image of face-to-face teaching.
All Los Angeles County residents could be next, as various other California counties are considered “high” transmission areas as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
If these conditions remain in place, mask requirements for indoor use can be introduced for the school year starting in autumn.
Biden’s illness is also emerging as the number of COVID cases increases in some parts of the country.
Officials like Dr. Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, President of the San Diego Unified Board (above), snaps at her critics. Who cares, they suggest. Just wear the mask or learn remotely
In San Diego, school principals mindlessly repeat the mantra that they “follow the science” as dictated to them by America’s top public health officials.
But more than two years after the coronavirus first paralyzed the world, the CDC, public health leaders and local officials are not following the science.
They resist it.
According to CDC guidelines introduced in July 2021, indoor masking is recommended if a community is experiencing “high” transmission.
The instructions are not an order. But liberal parts of the country follow these strict recommendations blindly.
Don’t they realize how much has changed since July 2021?
Many more Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or acquired natural immunity through infection.
We now benefit from many more effective treatments.
The dominant variants are far less lethal.
So when will America’s public health leadership pull its head out of the sand and acknowledge that its method of basing public policy recommendations on COVID case counts is now obsolete?
Don’t take my word for it – the evidence is clear.
In San Diego, COVID cases are peaking this summer, but COVID-related hospitalizations are at a three-month low.
Many other counties are seeing similar trends.
In addition, two officials at one of the largest hospital systems in Los Angeles and Southern California say there is nothing to worry about.
“It’s just not the same pandemic that it was, despite all the media hype … we see a lot of people have bad colds,” Brad Spellberg, Los Angeles County and University chief medical officer of Southern California Medical Center, said at a recent news conference Week.
In San Diego, COVID cases peak in the summer, but COVID-related hospitalizations are at a three-month low (above) San Diego County Weekly COVID Update
“It’s just not the same pandemic that it was, despite all the media hype … we see a lot of people have bad colds,” Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer of Los Angeles County and University at Southern California Medical Center, said at a recent news conference Week (above) San Diego County Weekly COVID Update
“As of this morning we have no one in the hospital who has had lung disease due to COVID,” epidemiologist Paul Holtom added. ‘Nobody in the hospital… Nobody. Nobody who had COVID-19 disease like we have seen in the past.”
Does that sound like an urgent public health emergency?
Of course not!
But here lies a real danger: completely unnecessary and clumsy policies that actually do more harm than good.
The potentially bigger problem is that our complacent public health leaders are stuck in old battles.
dr Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, was asked in an ABC interview about certain California counties reinstating indoor mask requirements, citing the year-old CDC guidelines.
“The CDC has very clear guidance on this…” he said. “…People wearing masks indoors are really important, and it’s really going to make a difference.”
But in July 2021, Delta was the dominant variant. Today, the omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5 are the dominant circulating strain of the virus.
Although highly transmissible, they cause milder diseases.
As of July 2021, only two-thirds of US adults were vaccinated and even fewer had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
Over 90% of US adults are now fully vaccinated and almost half have received a booster dose.
The natural immunity gained from infection has probably left 80% of all Americans, and an even larger percentage of children, with some protection from serious illnesses.
When medical professionals ignore this new reality, it borders on malpractice.
At this week’s White House press briefing, Dr. Jha along with CDC Director Dr. Walensky and NIAID Director Dr. Fauci: ‘If we go back two years ago, we had a very limited set of tools to manage viruses like this.’
‘[Now] We have all the tools we need to protect the American people: vaccines and boosters, treatments, tests, masks, ventilation and more.”
He’s right.
Why haven’t the policies changed?
You don’t have a good answer.
Officials like San Diego Unified Board President Dr. Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, her critics flippantly shrug it off.
Who cares, they suggest. Just wear the mask or learn remotely.
“You can choose not to go back to regular school,” she said of students who may not want to wear masks for a full day of school, “but to go to school where they don’t have to go to school at all except via Zoom.”
This maddeningly condescending attitude toward our children’s health and education is contemptible and irresponsible.
NWEA, a nonprofit group that conducts academic assessments, has released a new report analyzing the math and reading tests for 8.3 million students in grades 3-8 in about 25,000 schools.
The report concluded that it will take the average elementary school student three years to fully recover from learning losses caused by school closures and distance learning during the pandemic.
For older students, the damage is much worse.
President Joe Biden has joined the overwhelming majority of Americans who have tested positive for COVID
The report noted that for some, a “full recovery” may not be achieved before the end of high school.
Even the CDC recognizes the harm caused by distance learning, which is why they have said even the children most at risk for COVID, children with immune-compromising conditions, “should not be placed in separate classrooms or otherwise separated from other students.” .
I am stunned that any educator would willingly deny a single student the opportunity to learn in person.
Haven’t our children suffered enough?
How can teachers justify this, especially when there is no proven benefit for mandatory mask wearing indoors?
At the same White House press conference, Dr. Jha noted that wearing quality masks in indoor public spaces remains “an important tool in controlling the spread of COVID-19.”
However, when implementing mask requirements, high-quality masks are not worn consistently and correctly.
A study by the Covid States Project, a joint research effort by Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern and Rutgers, found that about 64% of people who wear masks choose cloth masks.
As noted in an article “The Case Against Masks at School” published in The Atlantic in January 2022 and in more recent reports from The New York Times, there is no evidence that mask requirements reduce transmission of COVID.
Finally, the CDC has reported research that suggests children, and especially young children, may have trouble communicating and understanding emotions when another person is wearing a mask.
America is not in the grip of the July 2021 pandemic.
This is clear to anyone willing to open their eyes.
It’s time to really follow the science.