1. Let’s enjoy the lull.
In much of the country, Omicron is obviously receding. It’s crazy to pretend that we will need the same COVID precautions in the months to come that we have needed in the recent past. But it’s just as crazy to pretend that the good news of the last few weeks means the time for pandemic precautions is over.
Both crazy extremes should try to meet in the middle. A word that might help is “lull.”
Pandemics come in waves. Between the waves we get lulls. There’s no way to know whether our December-January Omicron wave was our last wave, or how bad the next wave will be if there is one. In a few months we may or may not need to ratchet up pandemic precautions again. Meanwhile, let’s enjoy the lull.
Significant-progress-but-far-from-over shouldn’t be a tough needle to thread. As Winston Churchill famously said three years into World War Two: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
What’s toughest, I think, is admitting how little of the pandemic’s future we can predict, much less control. That’s why the concept of “lull” is so useful. We really know that things are better at least temporarily, and we can really control how we adjust to that improvement. The fact that we don’t know and can’t control what comes next only strengthens the case for making the most of the lull, like a cancer patient in remission.
2. We’re not all in the same pandemic.
An individual’s COVID risk depends on lots of variables, but these are the Big Four by far:
- How much virus you encounter in your typical day.
- How old you are.
- How healthy you are.
- How recently you were vaccinated or infected (if ever).
An individual’s response to COVID risk depends on a fifth factor as well: Your risk tolerance, how you assess the pros and cons of taking the risk of catching COVID versus enduring the precautions that reduce that risk.
For some people, this pandemic was over a long time ago. Their judgment about the five factors has led them to choose to live normally, or as normally as they’re allowed.
For some people, the arrival of Omicron meant resuming precautions they’d stopped when Delta receded. For them the receding Omicron spike makes a big difference, just as the receding Delta spike did. It means a sizable improvement in the first factor – how much virus they’re encountering – and that’s enough to convince them to live more normally again, at least till the next wave. They’re living the lull.
And for some people, this improvement in the first factor isn’t enough to resume normal living. Their assessment of the other four factors tells them to keep taking the precautions they’ve been taking.
In a less polarized moment, these three groups of people would try to accommodate each other.
Of course such accommodations are complicated by the fact that we affect each other. On the one hand, we’re all safer if the people around us wear a mask and get vaccinated and try not to end up crowding a hospital we might need. On the other hand, we’re all freer if the people around us don’t care whether we do those things. It’s not easy to find and hold the middle ground between radical individualism that denies our responsibility to each other and radical communitarianism that denies our freedom to manage our own risk.
I’d like to see experts and officials acknowledging that sensible accommodation is difficult … and then I’d like to see them urging everyone to make the effort. It is true that the precautions that made sense at the height of the Omicron spike may not make sense any longer. But it’s also true that the precautions that make sense to you, and for you, are not the same ones that make sense to and for me. Yes, the pandemic keeps changing, and right now it’s changing for the better. But it’s also true that we’re not all in the same pandemic.
Copyright © 2021 by Peter M. Sandman
