Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing coming out of their respective conventions: Almost no one cares about Covid anymore.
Infections are running rampant after the Democratic confab in Chicago, with staffers on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, reporters and other convention-goers all stricken — and in at least one case claiming the positive test was “worth it.” Cases also cropped up after the Republican National Convention in July.
“Voters do not like it being brought up at all,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign, who marveled at the near-total absence of masks at a Democratic convention where roughly 20,000 people crammed into Chicago’s United Center for a week. “They want to get over it.”
But “if it continues to worsen,” Bartlett said, “both parties will be forced to address it.”
The rhetorical vacuum around Covid comes even as cases have surged over the summer, hospitalizing thousands and killing nearly 700 people in one week in late July.
As the book says, we may be done with COVID, but COVID ain’t done with us.
I still wear KN95 masks in public. I got COVID once two years ago and never want to get it again.
But the main concern isn’t being deathly sick for a few weeks and having a cough that lasts for months (which I had, and which is enough to wear a mask a few extra times a day), nor death rates (which are still objectively awful and can take healthy and young people even if rare), it’s the possibility of long COVID. Every time you get it, you’re rolling the dice on lifelong, currently incurable health problems. And it’s the same moral problem of potentially being a carrier that kills the elderly or susceptible person you may not even know.
I’m like, “you do you” to everyone who is treating COVID as the new flu, but it’s objectively not. It may be endemic, hospitals may be used to it and have capacity, but it’s still very dangerous.