FAST-FORWARD ON PAST PANDEMIC MISTAKES | The Atlantic

By all means, please take the time to read more important details . . .there are more than a few

 

Reference Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/omicron-mistakes/621112/

 

"Omicron is dangerous not just in itself, but also because it adds to the damage done by all the previous variants—and at speed. And the U.S. has consistently underestimated the cumulative toll of the pandemic, lowering its guard at the first hint of calm instead of using those moments to prepare for the future. That is why it keeps making the same mistakes. American immune systems are holding on to their memories for dear life, but American minds seem bent on forgetting the past years’ lessons."

 

Omicron Is Our Past Pandemic Mistakes on Fast-Forward

We’ve been making the same errors for nearly two years now.

Illustration by Ben Hickey

 

By Katherine J. Wu, Ed Yong, and Sarah Zhang

The Atlantic |

"With Omicron, everything is sped up. The new variant is spreading fast and far. At a time when Delta was already sprinting around the country, Omicron not only caught up but overtook it, jumping from an estimated 13 to 73 percent of U.S. cases in a single week. We have less time to make decisions and less room to course-correct when they are wrong. Whereas we had months to prepare for Delta in the U.S., we’ve had only weeks for Omicron. Every mistake gets amplified; every consequence hits us sooner. We should have learned after living through multiple waves and multiple variants of COVID, but we haven’t, at least not enough. We keep making the same pandemic mistakes over and over again.

This is not March 2020. We have masks. We have better treatments. Our immune systems are much more prepared to fight off the virus, thanks to vaccines. But as a society, we are still not prepared.

Here are the six traps that we keep falling into, each consequence made all the more acute because of Omicron’s speed.

> We rush to dismiss it as “mild.”

> We treat vaccines as all-or-nothing shields against infection.

> We still try to use testing as a one-stop solution.

> We pretend the virus won’t be everywhere soon.

> We fail to prioritize the most vulnerable groups.

> We let health-care workers bear the pandemic’s brunt.