This commentary is by Deb Sherrer, a health care provider who lives and works in Shelburne.
We are all so over it. The daily grind of masks-no masks, handwashing rituals that make Lady MacBeth look like a wannabe, and tracking the 6-foot invisible human bumper.
Then there are the endless social choices and daily adaptation that Covid-19 requires, or the rejection of mitigation measures, if that’s your position. The pandemic has impinged on every aspect of our lives. It has also brought the specter of illness and death into everyone’s individual awareness and communities.
Since March 2020, there has been an omnipresent cloud of stress, angst, frustration, grief and grinding uncertainty. Wake up another day and hit repeat. If your nervous system hasn’t adapted to vacillating between the set points of “pandemic fatigue” or “fight or flight,” you’re in a minority.
Even folks who believe this is a hoax and/or choose not to wear a mask and/or get vaccinated are not exempt from the public friction and stressful, downstream impact. Like it or not, we’re in this together. My choices affect you and yours affect me. I don’t want you or your loved ones to die or end up with long-haul Covid-19, and I have the same hope for myself and my loved ones.
Unfortunately, since the much more transmissible Delta variant became predominant in Vermont in July 2021, Gov. Scott and his team’s leadership decisions have failed to adequately address and contain it. This has put more of us at risk for Covid-19, as well as increasing public confusion and distress. It is also straining our medical and broader health care systems. What happened to our previously stellar statewide leadership?
From March 2020 to June 2021, Gov. Scott, Dr. Levine and the team anchored themselves as clear-thinking, science-based, empathetic leaders, becoming the gold standard for leadership nationally. They took to the airwaves with calm candor, simple language (“turning the spigot”), and empathy (every death of a Vermonter matters).
While a minority of citizens were not pleased, and particular criticisms may be justified (for instance, school personnel should have been vaccinated sooner), the overall outcome was that Vermont led the nation in successful mitigation. Many Vermonters (and out-of-staters migrating to Vermont) felt more safe living here than in hotspot states, where public health interventions were not consistently implemented or blatantly rejected by their state’s leadership, thereby sacrificing citizens’ health and lives for political posturing.
In the past few weeks, Vermont has set record-breaking daily rates of infection, and according to The New York Times, we are now fifth in the nation for infection rates per 100,000 residents. Despite imploring, public requests from a wide range of Vermonters — including health care providers, public health employees, educators, legislators and vaccinated citizens with breakthrough cases that were less than “mild” — Gov. Scott has insisted that vaccination is the only necessary intervention, while encouraging “personal responsibility” regarding other mitigation measures, particularly wearing masks indoors.
He has held fast to this position despite the CDC’s recommendation that all individuals, irrespective of vaccination status, should wear masks indoors in areas of high infection to prevent viral spread.
Furthermore, Gov. Scott has stated it would be “an abuse of power” to reinstate a mask mandate and just offered “an olive branch” to the Legislature to create a pathway for towns to choose whether to individually impose mask mandates.
While the latter may seem like a gesture of peace at the state level, the actual implementation town-by-town sounds more like an invitation to 251 mini-conflicts or wars. More substantively: Viruses don’t follow maps and towns shouldn’t bear the procedural and psychological burden of deflected state leadership.
Equally or more troubling is that, in an unfolding pandemic, which by its nature means that science-based information is ever-evolving, best practices for mitigation and intervention are “of the moment,” as research data is derived as we live through it.
There are things we will know in one or two years that we can’t today. With approximately 10% to 30% of Covid infections resulting in long-haul Covid-19, we have no way to conceive the short- or long-term implications or prognosis of those affected.
From this article: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 114 million Americans had been infected with Covid-19 through March 2021. Factoring in new infections in unvaccinated people, we can conservatively expect more than 15 million cases of long Covid resulting from this pandemic. And though data are still emerging, the average age of patients with long Covid is about 40, which means that the majority are in their prime working years. Given these demographics, long Covid is likely to cast a long shadow on our health care system and economic recovery.”
There is also a serious concern that Covid-19 may increase early onset Alzheimer’s or result in a significant rise in the disease. For any adult daughter or son who has experienced becoming a stranger to their parent with advanced Alzheimer’s, this is a very troubling prospect.
Neither of these long-term concerns are addressed in the state’s short-view reassurance that vaccinated individuals with breakthrough cases are more likely to experience mild symptoms that do not “typically” result in hospitalization or death.
Thank you, Gov. Scott and the team, for stellar leadership up until July 2021. However, the Delta variant has been a game changer, and your leadership has not responded adequately. A call to “personal responsibility” is a reasonable invitation when we’re facing circumstances that have exclusively individual consequences. However, this is not exemplary, statewide leadership in a public health crisis that affects everyone, directly or indirectly, with long-term consequences on the horizon.
It also erroneously assumes that in a fractured, politicized media world, all Vermonters have both equal access to factual vaccination, medical and pandemic information and will act on this with the care of others in mind.
Please reconsider. We are pandemic-weary in every way possible. And every Covid-related illness and death of a Vermonter still matters.
