My father said it right: COVID is my generation’s 9/11.
9/11 forever changed the American reality, and it defined his generation in a way nothing else has. And twenty years later, it’s still defining our country’s relationship with others.
I remember 9/11. But I was six years old. I remember more than other six-year-olds. My first-grade teacher had the TV on, so I saw the smoking building. I didn’t know what that meant. I remember my mother bringing my preschool-age brother to school with her—like all the parents had—and we just sat in the cafeteria for a while. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew I had to be good. My brother did, too.
My boss, who is six years older than me, was a preteen when it happened. She watched the whole news report. She knew it was bad, she knew someone had done it to us, but she didn’t understand the significance.
The teens at the time, I imagine, felt more uncertainty than other minors. And to make it worse, when you’re 16, everything is seen through the filter of “People are going to think I’m weird for feeling this way”. (At least, that’s how it always was for me.)
(To those teens dealing with COVID now—I don’t know how you do it. I would’ve been an insecure mess. Well done.)
The adults, however, understood the full capacity of what 9/11 meant. It drastically changed their reality: their relationships, their lives, and their international identity. 9/11 was just a shadow for me, but it was—and continues to be—this monster that bit a chunk out of our parents’ feeling of safety.
COVID has done the same. It has permanently altered how human beings view our reality (as well as medicine). These alterations may vary, they may be positive or negative, but they exist for everyone.
More importantly, for this past year, we as a species have been trained to feel our unique way about our world. And now that we’re supposed to be “on the mend”, I’m feeling all my personal feelings about this pandemic taint the process.
Social-Distance, Hand-Wash, & Don’t Leave Your House
This is what I’ve been hearing for a year: “maintain six feet between people”, “wash your hands and hand-sanitize”, “wear a mask”, “stay quarantined in your house”.
We’ve suffered great emotional toll in completing these tasks, and now it’s all just supposed to be fine as long as we’re vaccinated?
HERD IMMUNITY
I’ll buy that for herd immunity. That’s what herd immunity is. Enough people become immune (either naturally or via vaccines) that illness cannot widespread. Those of us who are protected act as shields for people who cannot receive vaccinations themselves, either due to chemo-interactions, other illnesses, weakened immune systems, religious reasons, or personal choice.
The problem is, we’re not at herd immunity.
On the day I am writing this, 24 May 2021, a Google search says about 38.9% of Americans are fully vaccinated (129,006,463 people— ~130 million). Experts once expected approximately 70% of the population would have to be vaccinated to produce herd immunity against COVID-19. This means 232,733,006.1 (~230 million) more Americans would need to get vaccinated for our country to develop herd immunity.
Unfortunately, now it’s considered unlikely America will ever reach herd immunity. This is mostly due to problems like variant mutation, vaccine hesitancy (both by choice and medical counteractions), and the delayed development of the child vaccination (see sources here and here).
Similar concerns could exist for the world’s population. First- and second-worlders may get vaccinated, but that still won’t be enough to protect third-worlders. Under that logic, the whole world could never reach true herd immunity either.
So, with herd immunity far off, at least (if not tossed out the window completely), where does that leave us with these pandemic behaviours? Can we really stop social distancing and wearing masks and start going out and return to normal washing habits without tipping the scale back towards something scary and pandemic-y?
I don’t see how that happens.
IS HOPE IRRESPONSIBLE?
Quite frankly, I find it a bit irresponsible for the CDC to tell vaccinated people they can just resume normal activities before herd immunity occurs. I feel like that makes staying protected until herd immunity harder.
Now, I don’t know when the medical field realized herd immunity was essentially a no-go. It could’ve been months ago, and they’re just finally telling the rest of us. Maybe they’ve exhausted other options for herd immunity (or the like) with no success and the only thing they can tell us now is to go back to normal.
Maybe this is old news. But I doubt it.
I think the medical field—specifically in American news reports—have kept us as much up-to-date on new discoveries as they can. It’s how this country handles most issues. (How quickly have social injustice videos reached the internet? I’m sure it’s not much different with global medical health.)
I think they give us the newest, sturdiest information they have when they get it. They try to give Americans as much information as they can so that we can make responsible decisions.
However, I think their faith is misplaced. I don’t think hope is irresponsible. I think encouraging normalcy too early is something we will regret later on.
ALSO, IT’S SUMMER
Coronaviruses, like colds and the flu, are known to be less aggressive in the warmer months. With herd immunity out, it feels like we’re crossing all our fingers and toes and hoping we can find another long-term solution before winter rolls around.
Because I 100% believe COVID will have a comeback when winter comes. Like all coronaviruses.
If we know that we can’t reach herd immunity because enough people cannot or will not get the vaccines, why does the WHO and CDC think we will be okay when coronaviruses get their natural, cold-weather boost?
Private vs. Public Health
The truth is, especially as an American, so much power in a ruling entity is actually terrifying. And I do not like it.
The mask-mandate is a great example.
Last week, my employing company lifted all mask mandates, for both employees and customers. The rule now is “Please follow the CDC guidelines for your condition”. Meaning, if you’re fully vaccinated, you may choose not to wear a mask. If you’re not vaccinated, you’re still medically advised to wear a mask, social distance, and all of that.
For those who don’t know, the United States has a legal ruling called HIPAA, which basically protects all private medical information from being shared with non-approved people or companies. In the United States, your medical history, procedures, and conversations are completely private. Employers do not see them, other doctors must gain your permission (as the patient) to see them, even your spouse (and parents, once you’re 18 years old) need special permission from you.
So, when my company went from standing behind employees asking customers to leave the premises if they would not wear a mask to “follow CDC guidelines per your condition”, none of us were happy. It meant we had no ground to stand on in asking people if they even had a mask with them because the answer clues towards something in their medical history and would therefore be in violation of HIPAA.
Or so, I thought.
I had a professional in legal medicine in the store the other day. I was having this exact mask discussion with another guest who we all know by name, and this professional peeped up in the middle. She explained that while my logic was sound, technically, it’s still legal for someone to ask another about their vaccination status because COVID is classified under public health not private. It’s only illegal for things classified as private health.
Which is totally terrifying! To know that my government could at any moment classify a detail of my medical history as “public health” and then anyone, anywhere would have complete legal access to it—that is not okay.
Professionally, I understand why an active, global pandemic is classified under public health, but personally, I really don’t like this.
And in practice, this is merely a fun fact I can do nothing with. I’m not going to get into a verbal brawl with someone in my store over the technicality of asking someone to wear a mask.
My Relationship with Medicine Has Altered…
…which is probably the understatement of the century. In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I clearly have a very rocky relationship with medicine right now.
For a year, we’ve been trained to keep distance, wear masks, and hang out only on Zoom—all of which has been extremely isolating and bad, bad, bad for our mental health. I think it’s safe to say we’re all dying to get out from under those restrictions.
And yet, I’m finding I have a harder time with that than I expected.
I first realized it after watching a video from last June on Adrienne Hill‘s YouTube channel. She was an English teacher there prior to the pandemic and has since lived there as an expat YouTuber. She and a friend visited IKEA for the first time since the pandemic, and they were shocked to see as many people there as they did. It was packed! And they said it felt “very unsafe”.
That resonated with me. That’s how it feels with my work “back to normal” now, and my world in quick succession.
And I realized that every complaint I had from earlier in this post stems from a feeling of distrust and unsafeness that comes from normalcy.
Essentially everyone agrees now that COVID will be like the flu. It is an illness that we will get vaccinated for every year and it will always be around us, but most of us won’t die from it. The very illness that caused a global pandemic, we will come to live with.
It makes sense. All the biggies from history were like that once. Things we, as first-worlders, consider either eradicated or mere blips on the map were once apocalyptic.
We came to live with them, and we’ll come to live with COVID-19, too. Like our parents’ generation came to live 9/11. Our entire realities have been shifted, but we’ll come to live alongside this new monster that once bit into our safety.
It’s just a weird and uncomfortable thing to retrain my brain on. After feeling such a sense of fear and uselessness when members of my own family caught it, it’s a hard wall to breach in changing my relationship with COVID.
I don’t know how long it will take to not feel “unsafe” with normal. But I suppose there’s comfort in knowing I’m not the only one struggling with it. (Thank god.)
