Health

We urgently need a new national COVID-19 response plan


Recently Chicago’s Public School Crisis, the fall of the Broadway theater in New York City, changes are taking place in NBA and NFL screening protocols for players and extremely scarce The nation-wide rapid tests are all a jarring wake-up call for an urgent revision of our national COVID-19 response plan. These same scenes of turmoil and conflict over the reopening of American institutions and commerce reflect the absence of a consistent national plan response to the contagiousness of the Omicron variant. At the heart of this current failure is the need for a clear national definition of “public safety” that the American people can understand and accept. Vague and impressionist calls for “safety” are being divided by party lines over real-world policy and implementation.
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We must first correct this definition of safety as the necessary foundation for building a solid national plan. Second, our COVID-19 policies must not abruptly shift from scientific to research, change the availability of critical tools, and shift from federal agency to agency. Instead, policies must respond realistically to the drivers of human behavior and with a consistent view of the pandemic’s position.

The new plan must face current political realities. only prediction Americans’ response to the pandemic is their political ideology and partisanship. Pandemic polls have consistently revealed a dark red state / polarized blue state about COVID-related attitudes, behaviors, and policies. Significant differences in vaccination rates and mortality were also noted across the sides at both the state and county levels. This becomes especially relevant considering that in the past year there have been Increase 17 to 20 times hospitalization and mortality rates in unvaccinated and unvaccinated populations.

The Omicron variant’s ability to spread and spread rapidly has exacerbated these divisions. Most states are currently experiencing their peaks of the pandemic, although it is starting to decline in some places. The health system and its providers are overwhelmed and exhausted. At the same time, schools, colleges, employers, and most sections of society are struggling to “return to normal” as they face opposition from important sectors. for safety definitions and signs. As a country, we are stagnating because we simply don’t understand what we need to do.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President’s chief medical adviser, has recent champion, “We have to bring the American people closer together.” But patriotic calls for bipartisan harmony are not enough to unite us. To restore our dynamism and prosperity, we must build a new national COVID-19 plan based on the practical application of public health principles including political counter-narratives. our familiar.

The liberal narrative calls for avoiding infection at all costs and a greater willingness to accept the socioeconomic consequences of personal and social safety measures. Conservatives tend to take higher risks for infection and are more willing to accept its health consequences for themselves and the public.

Read more: Omicron could be the beginning of the end of the pandemic

Bipartisan policymaking must be evidence-based and responsive to political narratives. Both rebuttals do not have a monopoly on “following the science”. Omicron is politically agnostic. While the virus does not discriminate against religion, ethnicity, race, and sex, it leaves economically disadvantaged people and those with underlying health conditions very vulnerable. It also has a fierce geriatric agenda. This resulted in an ambitious yet achievable framework for a new national policy with four pillars that respond to the now well-defined characteristics of Omicron:

1) Changing national policy goals for the non-vulnerable

Our current goal is away case or infection—Identified as test positive — in everyone. Given Omicron’s unprecedented transmissibility and relatively mild health outcomes, this is unsustainable and unnecessary. The new and core foundation of our national goal must be serious health outcomes (Medical visits, hospitalizations, and deaths) in 260 million Americans are not vulnerable. A University of Washington review of recent studies and models concludes that Omicron is 90-99% less severe than Delta. This is due to a large increase in asymptomatic infections (approximately 80-90% of the total), a 50% reduction in the number of symptomatic people hospitalized, and a 5-10 times decrease in hospitalization rates. dead. These numbers place the relative risk of serious illness from Omicrons in non-vulnerable individuals same football field like the flu, a virus we’ve learned to live with.

Many non-vulnerable people equate infection with fear of death, debilitating long-term effects and endangering the safety of loved ones. These feelings were ingrained from two years of fear. This is frequently reinforced by emphasis on alarming uncertainties by our public health officials, scientists, social media and mainstream. This does not reflect a balanced data-driven risk assessment. Important concerns need to be addressed by focusing on protecting vulnerable people. A strong nationwide public education campaign to build confidence in this strategy and to address the fears, misconceptions, and relative risks that must accompany goal column advocacy to focus into serious results.

The longer we delay in making this inevitable cultural and political transition in re-establishing our goals from infection avoidance to fatal disease avoidance, the political divide and this conflict will continue to hinder us.

2) Maximize public health and social protection vulnerable

Eighty percent of US COVID-19 deaths and 46 percent of hospitalizations are focus on the elderly and immunosuppression. Over 65 years old have one 95% complete vaccination rate and more than half received booster shots, but they are still at risk of developing a breakthrough infection and serious consequences. This population continues to bear the brunt of the wrath of the pandemic and every effort should be made to reduce their risk. Given Omicron’s risk profile, infection avoidance is a common-sense mitigation strategy required only in vulnerable populations. In centralized facilities, this means avoiding exposure through mandatory vaccinations and rapid screening of staff and visitors. We also have to make sure they’re ready for a new, effective word-of-mouth method antiviral therapy. It is more difficult to secure these protections in multigenerational households and indoor public settings, and this requires further consideration of housing and other mitigation best practices. home.

3) Maximize voluntary vaccine uptake while minimizing duties.

Vaccination has a strong protective effect from the serious consequences caused by Omicron. However, about 39 million Americans are still have high resistance to be vaccinated. Nearly everyone will become immune at least in part to the current increase thanks to vaccines or immunity generated by natural infection. When unvaccinated people are infected, they further passively provide the public benefit of slowing transmission — although Quantity can vary considerably between individuals. Vaccination policy should consider the marginal cost-benefit of joint mandates in these circumstances.

The public health risk that unvaccinated people pose to vulnerable sites should be the primary driver of immunization mandates. Policy mandates should be applied in a more targeted manner, focusing on the high-priority impact on public health (e.g.: retreat and health care worker). We should avoid duty where political conflicts outweigh public health interests.

4) Reset the role of preventive interventions

Policies related to concealment, physical distancing, isolation, self-isolation, screening, and surveillance need to be re-examined to align with the new goals. Public policy should designate these interventions only when disruption of transmission has a clear public health benefit in high-risk settings — defined as interventions that directly affect vulnerable populations. vulnerable — such as public transport, centralized facilities, and multigenerational households. The role and indication of routine rapid testing and monitoring of asymptomatic populations should be closely evaluated. Individual and institutional choice should be allowed to govern the use of these preventive interventions in non-high-risk settings.

Omicron’s ubiquity and much lower virulence gave us the biological signal to move into the inevitable endemic “viral living” phase. The country must now challenge itself in both public policy and the private sphere to heed its implications. Omicron introduced us to clear new bipartisan goals: preventing serious outcomes in the 260 million non-vulnerable Americans and infections in the remaining 70 million. Our job now is to get the ball at the end of the field.



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