Covid Isn't Over. You're in Danger. I'm Done with the Gaslighting. You Should be Too.

It's the 3rd-leading cause of death, and we're treating it like a minor inconvenience.

Covid-19 is the single most studied disease in history.

In just 3 years, this novel coronavirus has logged over 300,000 published studies on PubMed alone. That’s just on PubMed.

So, while there is still much to learn about this disease and the virus that causes it, we already know a lot.

And what we know from these studies is very bad — perhaps the worst case scenario for a pandemic disease: one that masquerades as merely a flu-like illness but is in fact one of the most devastating pathogens that could ever infect humans.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing the body-wide destruction that SARS-CoV-2 can inflict. Our governments and public health agencies have done a horrid job educating the public about the risks, much less taking the appropriate steps to protect us from those risks.

But the thing is… we have data. Like I said, this is the most studied disease in history.

Those studies show, without a shadow of a doubt, that covid is a dire threat to everyone. Everyone. Even you.

The data is extremely clear on this too: the pandemic is not over. And, as I will argue in this article, in many ways we are worse off than ever.

The data also totally and irrefutably destroys this ridiculous, un-scientific notion that you can just “live your life” with no regards to your safety or the safety of others. It bears repeating. I promise you this: covid is a dire threat to your health and safety. Now. In 2023.

Just take a look:

• 25,000+ Americans died of acute covid infection (that we know of) in the first 6 weeks of 2023. That’s 3-4k deaths every week. Most of them were vaccinated.

• Tens of thousands more are at risk of dying from the long-term effects covid infection causes (read ahead).

• More than 23 million Americans now suffer from Long Covid, a debilitating chronic condition with no treatments in which people who have it describe as “torture”.

• 1-in-5 people who get infected by covid end up with Long Covid. You could be one of them — especially if you get infected more than once.

• Over 250,000 children have lost a parent or primary caregiver to this disease so far in the U.S.

• 86% of U.S. children have been infected themselves, putting them it great risk for serious consequences like heart disease, blood clots, diabetes, kidney failure, Long Covid and other cardiovascular events, according to studies by the CDC.

• Covid is also a leading cause of death amongst children in the U.S.

• Millions of people who are disabled or immunocompromised are totally locked out of society because there are zero protections in place for them. They’re blocked from safe access to essential goods and services like grocery shopping, public transport, healthcare, the DMV and postal centers and all the rest.

The people behind the stats I just listed are not “living their lives”. Not at all.

To recap, thousands of Americans each week are literally un-alive due to covid. Many more are suffering from the long-term health issues, the grief and trauma of losing loved ones, and the torture of either Long Covid or total erasure from society.

This is the real world, far removed from whatever fantasy you’ve been tricked into thinking you’re a part of.

Death. Sickness. Trauma. Pain. That’s what’s happening now all around you. And you don’t have to look that hard to see it.

UPDATE: as of April, covid deaths have eclipsed the yearly average of car accident fatalities in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the only messages about covid I ever hear are to “move on”, that we have to “live our lives”. That it’s “just like a cold now”. Everyone saying “covid is over” without any evidence to back up such a ridiculous claim.

It’s time we all wake up, stop shrugging it off, and work together to contain the spread of this SARS virus. Millions of lives are at stake.

And I’m not just here to gripe about how I and so many others don’t feel safe*. I’m also here because I AM WORRIED ABOUT YOU.

Pretending covid is over will not protect you from the virus or the devastation it could inflict on you and your peers. And this airborne virus is on the loose, unchecked, savagely burning through our country coast to coast, killing, maiming and disabling tens of thousands of people on the daily.

It’s leaving a path of destruction in its wake that you really can’t miss unless you don’t want to look (I imagine you don’t).

Enough is enough. I will not be gaslit anymore. You shouldn’t be gaslit anymore either.

Ahead in this article, we’ll cover:

• why you still need to protect yourself

• why letting covid spread without mitigation is disastrous (and just plain evil)

• taking our government leaders to task for their failures

• and why once again committing to a global effort to stop its spread would be a worthy and noble cause.

And… at the end of it, I’ll issue a challenge to you to do more to stop covid spread (because I’m about solutions just as much as the problems).

Note that everything I discuss here is backed by troves of evidence and research from some of the leading scientific publications and institutions in the world. All of my sources are linked as underlined text throughout the article, so please explore them to see the data for yourself.

Ok, let’s get one thing clear right off the bat…

There’s no such thing as ‘mild’ covid

The absurdity of using the word “mild” in association with COVID-19, the current third-leading cause of death in the United States, cannot be overstated.

It’s like saying a “mild battery acid facial burn” or a “mild amputation.” It simply doesn’t make sense (amputation, by the way, a documented complication of covid infection).

What I want you to know is that a covid infection is dangerous to anyone and everyone regardless of your age, background, health condition, vaccination status or any other qualifier.

But don’t just take it from me. The CDC recently acknowledged the danger that all of the studies have been showing for years:

“Emerging evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can have lasting effects on nearly every organ and organ system of the body weeks, months, and potentially years after infection.” — The CDC

I mean, it is right there in the name. SARS stands for “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome”. So, by default, it cannot be mild. It’s not MARS.

Indeed, this word “mild” to describe covid is the world’s biggest misnomer.

It’s true, the acute phase of covid infection could only manifest itself in the initial physical symptoms of light sniffles (it could also manifest itself in sudden death, so just keep that in mind).

But studies have shown that even a “mild” covid infection increases risk of death 10x for at least a year after infection for all who catch it.

Many people are asymptomatic during the acute infection phase as well. How many covid infections have you had that you didn’t know about? A scary prospect once you read what we’re about to cover.

You see, covid is NOT really a respiratory illness. Researchers at Oxford University call it a “Serious Vascular Disease with Primary Symptoms of a Respiratory Ailment”. So, you need to stop comparing it to colds and flus. No cold killed 30,000+ Americans in less than two months in 2023. So, just stop comparing them.

But if it’s not really a flu-like illness, what is it?

SARS-COV-2, the virus, enters the body via the respiratory system. But it very quickly begins infiltrating other systems in your body. After binding to the ACE-2 receptors in your nose (or sometimes mouth or eyes) to set off an infection, it digs itself into your blood vessels. It infects the endothelial wall, the physical lining of your blood vessels.

From there, the covid virus has VIP access to every corner of your body.

Your blood vessels. Your heart. Your internal organs. Your brain.

At any (and maybe all) of these points, covid could inflict untold, irreparable harm on you.

Possibly the scariest effect of covid’s onslaught is its ability to do serious damage to the body long-term. Many disease scientists and researchers now believe viral persistence — that is, where the virus takes up shop in viral reservoirs all over the body and remains active — is the most likely culprit in Long Covid.

This long-term damage can physically show itself as the horrifying, untreatable symptoms seen in Long Covid. On its own, Long Covid could ruin your life. But what about the rest of the harm a covid infection could cause?

The long-term damage caused by covid can also be asymptomatic. For example, the covid virus causes damage to the heart, among many other organs. This is because the virus itself attacks heart tissue. Your first symptom of this heart damage could be a fatal heart attack. Not ideal.

This is why the CDC recently updated its definition for covid to be listed in death certificates to consider the “possibility that death was due to long-term complications of COVID-19, even if the original infection occurred months or years before.”

The data backs up this decision by the CDC.

Cardiovascular deaths amongst 25-44 year olds have skyrocketed since the beginning of 2020: some 30-40% more deaths of heart attacks, strokes and blood clots in young people since the pandemic started. Scores of scientific literature show unequivocally that covid is the cause of this drastic rise in cardiac events.

Young people are not supposed to die of heart attacks.

Covid doesn’t just do cardiovascular damage. Recent studies have found the virus billowed into virtually every major organ of the human body.

We have scores of research showing it harms the brain, liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, eyes, gastrointestinal tract, reproductive system and more.

Covid has been linked to increased risks for Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, diabetes, hepatitis, liver failure, kidney failure, erectile dysfunction 🫣, and cancer (yes, cancer ), among many other diseases.

One covid fact the studies have shown that is irrefutable: covid damages the brain.

This study says: "Even patients with mild cases of COVID-19 often suffer from long-term SARS-CoV-2 effects in the brain, including fogging, reduced grey matter thickness, and brain size"

Another found nearly one in two people who have reportedly recovered from acute COVID-19 cite disabling fatigue – that is, fatigue lasting more than twelve weeks – coupled with a series of attention and cognitive deficits similar to persistent post-stroke neurological symptoms.

Another jarring study that just recently dropped found the risks of even “mild” COVID-19 impacts cognitive ability. It frighteningly concluded that 1 in 4 people infected with covid show clear cognitive deficits after even a mild case.

This notable Harvard brain doctor puts it bluntly: “Even if people escape brain damage during the initial attack of COVID-19, they remain at considerably greater risk of various brain conditions, including strokes, depression, anxiety, and psychosis for the next several years.”

Children are also in horrific danger. All children. A huge study published in the Lancet shows extreme risks for strokes, seizures, cognitive deficits (including dementia), psychotic disorders and brain swelling in children infected with covid, risks which remained for over 2 years after accute infection.

Another study found covid to lead to massive increases in diabetes in children.

And contrary to what most people believe, yes, covid is a leading cause of death in children.

Some 90% of kids have now been infected with covid in the U.S., and they’re being exposed to repeated infections indefinitely, which is a catastrophic doomsday scenario that we’re just letting happen.

Then there’s the immune damage.

Perhaps one of covid’s most insidious tricks is its ability to ravage the immune system. It infects and destroys memory T cells and B cells, your immune system’s most crucial tools to fending off illness.

This immune system damage might explain why you or your kids might constantly feel sick. It certainly opens the door for infections of all kinds to take hold much easier.

But this also impacts your long-term health. Researchers have noted a striking similarity between covid’s impact on the immune system and that of HIV/AIDS, some going as far as to conclude that Long Covid resembles AIDS.

One similarity between the two diseases is the effect on CD8⁺ T cells, a specific type of immune system cell that’s responsible for waging war against foreign pathogens in your body by recognizing and attacking them. CD8⁺ T cells are also crucial for the fight against invaders like cancer. The NIH calls them “The Foot Soldiers of the Immune System”.

The similarities between covid’s impact on the immune system has been compared to other immune-busting viruses, including HIV.

TIME Magazine, among many others have covered covid’s impact on the immune system. I encourage you to read some of this literature and understand the true risk you’re taking by getting infected with this SARS virus.

Even relatively easy bouts with COVID-19 can still take a toll on the immune system, according to a paper published Mar. 15 in the journal Immunity—particularly on T-cells, which provide long term and durable protection against viruses. - TIME Magazine

We’re really starting to get a clearer picture on covid’s immune system carnage.

This study published in Nature found that 80% of T cells die, with 20% of them being CD8⁺, within blood samples of covid infected individuals.

Another covid study recently published in Immunity states:

“We did observe a major reduction in both the magnitude and functionality of peak CD8+ T cell responses in previously infected individuals after vaccination… The deterioration of CD8+ T cell function is seen in patients with active viral infections that had been either eliminated, in the case of HCV or greatly reduced as with HIV. This dysfunction persists for a year or more after the active phase of infection, suggesting lasting damage, despite the absence or near absence of the relevant virus.”

One crucial thing to note about this damage to T cells is that getting infected with covid harms the effectiveness of vaccines because one of the primary functions of vaccines is eliciting a T cell response to defend against the pathogen.

🚨 So, getting covid literally makes your vaccinations worse at protecting you. 🚨

And we’ll round out our proof covid isn’t mild with one last frightening thing about covid risk you really need to know. Brace yourself:

You read that right.

Risks of horrible long-term consequences and mortality go up with each infection.

That’s according to a major peer-reviewed study of nearly 6 million people published in the science journal Nature which found that you’re 2x more likely to die and 3x more likely to be hospitalized by your second infection than your first infection, and the risks go up from there.

This was observed in all groups regardless if they were vaccinated or how many vaccine doses they had.

Since there are so many studies showing just how harmful covid is, I can’t put them all here. We’d be here all day. Maybe all month.

But plenty of other writers have covered just how dangerous this disease is.

Even with the Omicron variant, which people often refer to as “mild”, is far more dangerous than any seasonal respiratory illness. According to two US studies looking at fatality during the COVID-19 pandemic, people who come down with the Omicron variant infection had a 5-times higher risk of 30-day mortality than those treated for seasonal influenza

So, now you see the impacts covid can have on your health.

My hope is that you start to understand just how “un-mild” covid actually is. Picture yourself with Long Covid or new onset diabetes or paralysis after a stroke or being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s before you turn 50. Is this really worth the risk of repeated covid infections? I hope you are really asking yourself this question.

Look at it like this. Do you reject the habit of cigarette smoking to protect your health? Do you avoid secondhand smoke because all of those studies show secondhand smoke can lead to cancer, cardiovascular dangers, cognitive decline and aging?

Well, one covid infection is like breathing in cancer, heart attacks, brain damage and accelerated aging all in one, just from a few mere seconds of breathing in the SARS2 virus.

When it comes to Long Covid, I urge you to read up on it and hear some victims’ stories. It’s a horrific and debilitating disease. And vaccines don’t seem to help much in protection from Long Covid.

You can get a taste of what “life” is like with Long Covid by seeing a person who I’ve followed over the years, Dianna Cowhern, a.k.a. Physics Girl, who suffers with it in the video below — but be warned, it’s hard to stomach. She was vaccinated and living life like the world told her to do and then, in 2022… this. While you’re watching, remember that 1-out-of-every-5 people infected with covid gets Long Covid.

So, you can see, this is nothing to take lightly. You could very well be just like those suffering. Who knows what your next covid infection will do to you.

Death. Sickness. Trauma. Misery. That’s what’s happening now all around you. And you don’t have to look that hard to see it.

Aside from all the frightening health impacts and risks brought on by covid infection to yourself personally, it’s very clear covid is not mild in its current impact on society.

If you really believe that you somehow could get covid totally unscathed, please look around you at all the damage being done by covid — still.

The full ICUs. The millions dealing with the horror of Long Covid with no treatment options available. The millions of people who can’t work because of Long Covid. The harm to our economy. The immune deficiencies caused by covid leading to you and everyone around you always feeling sick. The kids missing school with illness over and over. Vulnerable people locked out of society because there are no safe spaces. Activities and events constantly being disrupted. That Springsteen concert canceled again because one of the E Street Band members has covid for the third time.

Covid’s impact today stretches far and wide and has infiltrated literally every sector of daily life, whether you realize it or accept it or not.

Covid will even break the economy. One report from The Economist forecasts 0.75% GDP loss in 2025 due just to to SARS-CoV-2 infections.

And you cannot deny that the destruction this disease is causing to millions of people who are in pain, grieving or traumatized. This harm could never be classified as “mild”, so I beg you to stop using that word.

This isn’t salsa. This is people’s lives.

No, it’s not over.

Believing covid is no longer a big deal in 2023 is like believing the earth is flat. It goes against all of the evidence.

The world might feel as if it was in 2019 if you tune out all the things we just covered. The truth is we’ve all collectively built this group think fantasy that doesn’t agree with the science.

This idea that covid is over is a nice theory to have and to dream about. Unfortunately, the theory is wrong.

The CDC’s community transmission levels show that as recently as early March of 2023, over 92% of counties in the U.S. is in substantial or higher transmission levels.

Even as the most recent winter surge appears to have subsided somewhat momentarily, it’s clear we haven’t addressed covid in any meaningful way that suggests your risks of being infected are all that much lower.

I’ll also remind you that between April and September of last year, over 75,000 Americans died of covid. At this point, there is no seasonality to this virus. Just ebbs and flows — and the ebbs are getting shorter and more serious as we have erased all protective measures in society.

One truly accurate way to understand the state of covid spread is national wastewater levels. These measure the amount of SARS-CoV-2 detected in sewage wastewater. The measurements taken from watersheds have been extremely accurate at predicting each covid surge since the pandemic began and correlate strongly to community infection counts.

So, what’s the current state of national wastewater levels of SARS2 compared to other years?

For over a year, between January 2022 and spring 2023, the nationwide covid wastewater levels (in royal blue in the below graph) have averaged more than they did in 2020 and 2021. You can see there are far higher levels in the most recent year-plus than the first two years of the pandemic.

You’ll also notice how much higher the wastewater levels are in the latter part of that graph than the documented cases (in teal) when previously wastewater and case numbers remained similar. This shows you just how much we are undercounting covid infections these days.

There’s more. Specifically now, in March 2023, there’s more COVID circulating in the U.S. than March 2021 and March 2022 COMBINED.

See the lime green line representing 2023 in the bottom left (compared to the light blue and dark green) of this graph:

Covid spread is worse now than it was a year ago. That’s not how it’s supposed to be.

It can’t be left out: the variants currently circulating are far more dangerous than the variants from earlier in the pandemic. The latest variants all show immune escape from immunity provided by vaccines and prior infection, and some of the more scary strains have more virulence, meaning they will make you a lot sicker.

Do the math: covid is still spreading — more than this time last year or the year before — and this version of the virus is more dangerous.

Another major difference between now and back in the earlier days of the pandemic is that we have fewer protective measures being taken than ever before during the pandemic. Everyone is acting like it is 2019 when in reality, we have substantial covid spread in most of the U.S.

So let’s, once and for all, put to bed this insane notion that covid is somehow a thing of the past. It’s still spreading. And, like we said earlier, all it takes is one infection to kill you or permanently disable you.

Anywhere you go right now, there’s a significant risk of infection. Just think how much covid there is in the airport, on public transit, at movie theaters, at that concert or sporting event, or even floating around the office.

Think about the children. Schools are actually the leading driver of covid infections in the U.S. today. By letting our kids breathe this virus in and out constantly since fall 2021, we’ve provided the perfect epicenters for SARS2 to tear through communities nationwide as it travel from one kid’s household to the next at breathtaking speeds.

And we’re exposing all of our youngest to a virus that does perhaps permanent damage to the brain, cardiovascular system and immune system. Kids don’t have agency to protect themselves. They depend on the adults to protect them. Their future is totally beholden to what we, the grown ups, choose to do.

Our recent choices have been, at best, nonsensical and at worst apocalyptic.

Another thing to keep top of mind is that vulnerable people, who many of us were committed to protecting at the beginning of the pandemic, are still very vulnerable.

There are millions of people right now living with a disability, chronic illness, or are immunocompromised who don’t have the luxury of going along with the pretend ending to the pandemic.

As one person was quoted in The USA today:

“With the removal of mask mandates in health care settings and essential places such as pharmacies, public transit and grocery stores, immunocompromised people are made outcasts. Telling disabled and chronically ill people to ‘stay home forever’ is cruel.”

Those with certain conditions are still forced to exercise extreme caution. And now with hardly anyone else taking precautions, it’s virtually impossible for them to safely access essential goods and services, much less take part in anything enjoyable, without literally putting their lives on the line.

This is a widespread feeling from the most vulnerable people in our society. It’s not a rare situation either. Nearly 1-in-4 Americans have a condition that puts them at higher risk for severe consequences if they contract covid-19.

But we’ve apparently determined that they are disposable for some reason and abandoned any and all measures that help keep them safe.

“I have autoimmune issues, and I’m not able to go out without a mask and super caution. I feel left behind by the rest of the public moving on with their normal lives without masks. It’s like my illness is making me pay twice!” - Immunocompromised person quoted in The Los Angeles Times article “The loneliness of being immunocompromised in the age of COVID-19”

Given all of this, the universal behavior and governmental policy of pretending covid is over when it is clearly not over is unacceptable to me. It should be unacceptable to you too.

I wish this were enough to convince you to take up precautionary measures again. But let’s reiterate that covid is still a dire threat to you. Take in sum that there is no such thing as mild covid and that it’s not over, and then fit yourself into the equation.

The covid spread was never contained. There’s still no herd immunity like we all have been hinging our hopes on, despite 80-90% of the country having been infected, many several times.

Pop star Ed Sheeran knows this. He’s had covid 7 times in 3 years.

Where’s the natural immunity? And when’s the last time you’ve had that many infections with the same illness in that short a time period?

Further, covid has not evolved into a common cold like we all were promised (more on that next), and the vaccines and treatments are getting worse and worse at being effective or useful in any meaningful sense of slowing the pandemic.

We keep trying and trying to wish covid away. But it’s still here doing its thing. Killing and maiming. Killing and maiming.

Yet, we have all resigned ourselves to “live with the virus”, and understand that this fatalistic thinking will actually reveal itself to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we keep covid spreading, it will make us pay dearly. If we try to live with the virus, we will find out what that truly looks like. We don’t want to see that world. We don’t have to live with this virus, and choosing to do so will have disastrous results.

Years from now we will realize that trudging forward with the current pandemic approach was a terrible, terrible idea. Many will suffer. You could be one of them. The economy will collapse. Reporters and historians will ask in unison: “what the hell were we thinking?”. By then it will be too late. We don’t have to resign ourselves to forever covid. But we need to take action now.

If you’re still in the “live with the virus” camp, ask yourself why would you want to? Don’t you care about your own health and future? Are you not concerned about the health of your loved ones? What about the safety of kids? Aren’t you tired of it constantly disrupting your life and breaking the economy?

As a society, does it make sense to repeatedly expose ourselves to this SARS virus? Historically speaking we’ve always addressed health threats — not always promptly, but usually we do take measures to vanquish a major threat to our collective health.

We didn’t “move on” or accept forever polio, cholera, smallpox, secondhand smoke, asbestos exposure or lead poisoning. We don’t tolerate drunk driving, largely thanks to activism and awareness campaigns, and drunk driving accidents and deaths have plummeted. We clean our tap water so we don’t all get dysentery and die. Many states outlaw knowingly exposing someone to HIV.

We never “learned to live” with any of these threats to our health because they are all so deadly and dangerous. But we are all perfectly fine coexisting with a SARS virus, the current third-leading cause of death? This just doesn’t make sense.

So, can we please stop this madness? It’s a SARS virus. Let’s start protecting each other again!

If we keep going with the make believe ending to the pandemic, we won’t be living with the virus. We’ll be dying with it.

The more the virus spreads, the more it mutates into something worse

As of this writing, the dominant variant around the world is XBB.1.5, an annoyingly cumbersome moniker. If you prefer a name less resembling of one of Elon Musk’s offspring, this variant has also gone by the nickname “Kraken”.

Whatever you call it, you should know its parent strain, XBB, is a *recombinant variant*.

What’s a recombinant variant, you ask? Recombinant variants form when two different variants of a pathogen infect the same cell.

Record scratch.

You read that correctly. The same cell. As in one cell. In one human body.

One person caught two different versions of SARS2 at the same time — say, hopping from one store to another where there was a lot of covid spread — and 💥 BAM! 💥 new covid variant. XBB’s origins are in Singapore, where it killed, hospitalized and maimed thousands before spreading around the globe.

If that one person who caught two different variants at the same time had worn a mask when they were infected, we wouldn’t be talking about XBB because it wouldn’t exist.

It’s like a cruel, mutant virus version of It’s a Wonderful Life only we really, really, really wish that this character didn’t exist at all. Too bad that one person fucked us all over, right?

That gets to my main point here:

Every PREVENTED infection matters.

Every single one.

So, you might think each time you take on your own personal risk that the only harm done could be to you (and those around you, as we’ll discuss next). But the reality is that such carelessness has ripple effects around the world.

Your covid infection could harm the global effort to contain this virus. Your covid infection could cause a new variant to take off — one like XBB, which evades immunity from both vaccines and prior infection as well as protection offered by treatments for immunocompromised people like Evusheld.

Your covid infection could lead to a more destructive variant than any we’ve seen before.

The virus’s ability to continue evolving into more dangerous versions of itself is being fueled by this global sense of individualism. The whole “you do you” approach to a pandemic is one of the most ridiculous things the human race ever conjured up.

We need a “we, us, together” approach. Now.

This means we have a job to do. As a society, it’s urgent we work together to slow the spread of this virus and get community transmission down.

The more it spreads, the more it mutates. The more it spreads, the more vulnerable people are put at risk.

I believe there can be a time that covid is no longer a threat. But that time is very clearly not now. As one scientist and Harvard professor puts it: “The belief—or perhaps it was hope in disguise— was that with the development of the vaccines, we could go back to living our lives as usual, back to a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy. This simply is not so, as evidenced by surging cases around the world.”

It’s not a hopeless cause though. We have agency in this matter. We can reach a point where covid is no longer wreaking such widespread havoc. But…

We need to stop abdicating our own personal responsibility to control the spread. The government needs to stop trying to convince us that the pandemic is over (more on that later) and instead address this virus spread with real mitigation and protective measures.

Each of us has a role to play as a part of a collective. As one major study published in Nature found individualistic behaviors and policies are extremely detrimental to containing the spread of covid:

“We demonstrate that an individualistic culture can impede the containment of COVID-19… we show that countries scoring high on individualism generally have a more severe COVID-19 situation.”

That’s been proved out in 2023. We’re as individualized as ever, and SARS2 is having a field day with our population.

(By the way, recombination is not the only way to get new variants. Each covid infection creates over a trillion copies of the virus. Each one of those trillion copies is an opportunity for SARS2 to mutate).

XBB.1.5/Kraken is an even more mutated version of this virus that is highly contagious. It was born in the northeastern U.S. Who knows where the next horrific variant will be spawned. But it could be because of you.

We’re doing this to ourselves — but there’s a way out

If you’ve been vaccinated, chances are you feel great about “moving on”, but the virus doesn’t give a flying fuck about your feelings. It’s just looking for hosts to infect. And unfortunately, the covid vaccines do little to prevent transmission.

This has been the case since after summer 2021 back when the Delta variant spread globally (remember Greek letters?!). All variants since then have been remarkably elusive of the vaccine protection from infection. Add on that these vaccines are far from durable (protection wanes in just 3-4 months) and it leads to a whole lot of unjustified hubris.

So, you may feel all “vaxxed and relaxed”, but your carefree attitude is bound to get someone killed.

There’s another problem with this attitude.

In the current moment where there’s so much pandemic denialism, we’re also dealing with serious vaccine over-confidence. The vaccines have saved millions of lives, no doubt, but they’ve also infected us with a contagious sense of invincibility.

Most everyone is still under the impression that vaccines totally protect them from death and severe illness. But since the Summer of 2022, a majority of covid deaths in the U.S. have been among vaccinated individuals.

People will also argue that because we have vaccines, we don’t really need to worry about covid that much as a society. But most people haven’t been vaccinated nearly enough. Only ~37% of Americans ever even received a booster dose of the covid vaccine. That means that a majority of vaccinated Americans most recent vaccine dose was back in the first half of 2021.

[Quick side note: before my article gets hijacked by anti-vaxxers, let me just say a word about vaccines: get them. Any vaccine is protective and much preferred over the disease they’re designed to protect against. For *able bodied individuals*, a vaccinated person is 10 times less likely to die of a covid infection than an unvaccinated person during acute infection. Take that protection!]

We are all defining this pandemic in its current state with wholly inadequate terms. The vaccine-only strategy is clearly not working to control the pandemic. But it also apparently made everyone totally forget they can still spread covid if they’re infected.

So, we’ve established that covid is not mild, covid spread is still high, vaccines don’t prevent transmission, and the vaccine-only strategy is not working to end the pandemic.

It feels like we don’t have a choice really other than just “live with the virus”.

But we do have a choice: recommit to “all in this together”. We can break the chains of transmission by turning to another tool in our arsenal.

Polls and surveys have consistently shown that people will take precautionary measures if the covid situation gets bad “again”.

Even as recently as December, Americans support mask wearing.

According to this CDC study’s results, if people perceive covid spread to be high, they will take up precautionary measures.

And, as you see in this poll, a majority of people consistently say if covid cases rise locally, they would wear masks in public.

Wearing masks when covid spread is high is the cool and fashionable thing to do. You would be in the majority if you followed suit.

Well, we’ve made it abundantly clear in this article: covid spread is high. Most everywhere.

One thing this pandemic made clear is that there are still some people who don’t seem to respond well to being told that they should take extra steps to protect others. So, how about if I ask nicely?

If you fashion yourself as someone who cares about others, then I have one simple ask of you:

Wear a mask.

Please. Just wear a good mask in public. This isn’t hard. It’s proven to work. It shows others you care about them. It’s an act of love. ❤️ And it’s not that inconvenient.

Oh, and yeah… it protects you!

Like, do you really want to take on the risk of brain damage, heart attacks and strokes just so you can shop in the cereal aisle without a mask? That’s the hill you might literally die on?

Do you really want to be the one who spawns the next global covid variant because you wouldn’t wear a mask while you picked out wood stain at Home Depot?

Do you really want to be the reason a child gets killed?

You can have a huge impact on saving lives, normalizing safety, and helping your community by wearing a mask as much as possible.

It’s really that simple.

So, you might be wondering why there is such a disconnect between such a terrible threat like covid and the current way we are approaching that threat. I would argue that the answer is that those in power have willed this pandemic indifference into existence for political and economic reasons. To pinpoint how this could be possible, we need only replay the tape.

The reason to discuss this issue is crucial in understanding the true nature of the pandemic today. It serves to bolster my main arguments that covid is not over, that it’s not mild, and that we need those in power to take more action. Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Part III

The government continues to fail us

While it’s true you don’t have to look that hard to see that this is still, in 2023, a crisis causing untold amounts of harm around the world, you can be forgiven for not seeing it because those in power have pulled out all the stops to convince you otherwise.

And c’mon, you’ve been through three-plus years of a pandemic. It’s a tough situation. We can be outraged about the situation while still giving people grace. I know that’s something I need to work on.

Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if at some point reading this article you uttered to yourself “if it’s really so bad, why is no one talking about it?” That’s a great question, and the answer helps explain how we got here.

For almost a year now, the U.S. has experienced the equivalent amount of death from covid to that of 3 or 4 jumbo jet airliners crashing and killing all on board every single week. If planes were falling out of the sky at such a rate, you’d hear about it everywhere. And you probably wouldn’t be booking flights anytime soon.

But health crises have always been buried. Outside of the early days of a pandemic, most don’t acknowledge health situations until they hit home, and by then it’s too late. You’re stuck in a mercilessly flawed system and subject to regular harm while the world keeps spinning around you with little acknowledgment.

Just ask anyone with a chronic illness or disability like cancer, M.S. or ME/CFS. These people are suffering, forced into an endless abyss of failed systems and medical bills, and straight up ignored by society.

If you don’t see a health issue truly first hand, you’re not bound to make a fuss about it either. This is a serious issue that transcends the COVID-19 pandemic and, frankly, is for another article.

But suffice to say that government and corporate interests have had a notoriously easy time obscuring the true toll of illness and disease — just think about the HIV/AIDS pandemic or the various environmental disasters over the years. These events have caused millions and millions of people to suffer, but you probably don’t typically think about them yourself too often unless you're a victim or maybe a disability activist or working insurance sales.

Covid is like any other health situation only on steroids. Instead of an under-the-radar faction of the population, it’s a huge swath of people who are very vocal about their strife. Are you listening?

On top of all the mass death currently happening, I’ll remind you again that 1-in-5 people who get infected with covid wind up with Long Covid, according to the CDC. One analysis shows 1 out of every 13 Americans now has Long Covid.

The people affected are SCREAMING for help. But they’re being ignored.

Despite the large numbers of people being harmed by covid and its unchecked spread, the government has lost all interest in combating this virus. And they’ve made sure you have too.

This is all rooted in a deep sea of plausible deniability. Those in power have easily shielded themselves from accountability because you want their denialism to be truth.

Add to the equation this innate burning draw to return to pre-2020 normalcy that everyone collectively feels — including yours truly — and you have the perfect recipe for a quietly ravaging crisis that goes unaddressed.

It really is so much easier to pretend it’s over. Until it’s not. Until you’re the one with the heart attack at 32. Until you’re the one saddled with the $75,000 medical bill. First payment is due next month!

Governments around the world, especially the U.S., feel this pressure of returning you to normalcy too. Leaders (wrongfully) believe that it’s beneficial to the economy and themselves politically to get you back to work, back into schools, back into society with no reminders (i.e. masks) that there is a pandemic currently burning.

The Nation wrote back in August of 2022:

Rather than make the case for renewed Covid protections, the Biden administration has normalized illness, avoided telegraphing a sense of urgency to the public, and stayed mostly silent about long Covid and Covid mortality. Repeating the catchphrase “We have the tools”— yet not working to make sure everyone has those tools — public health leaders have been resting on unearned laurels.

The thing that is so disheartening, and, frankly, disturbing is that the gaslighting is so plainly obvious, yet we’re hardwired to look the other way.

The government knows covid is a dire threat to all people. They have the data just like you and I do. Hell, a lot of the data in this article is from the CDC or NIH, a.k.a. the U.S. government. But it seems our leaders have determined that short-lived economic gains and corporate interests are more important than your safety, so no need to call attention to it.

Although, sometimes, the government does call attention to it. They just know the public is putting their blinders on to anything that breaks their precious return to normalcy…

It’s a cunning sleight of hand. There’s no blatant effort to hide the facts. They all just know you have no appetite for them.

The result? All you hear is “Get back to work!”, capitalism’s loud and clear message to “move on” from the pandemic.

Our leaders decided that your life and the lives of those around you are not as important as concocting an illusion that there’s no more threat. And lo and behold, it worked.

Back when President Joe Biden was candidate Joe Biden (remember him?), he made all kinds of compelling promises on how he and his admin would address the pandemic. They laid out a pretty sensible plan and a roadmap to get us out of this crisis. It, by and large, won him the presidency. That plan is still live on the Biden campaign website.

I distinctly remember Mr. Biden calling then president Trump’s handling of the pandemic a “failure on purpose.”

Of course, back then, Trump tried everything in his power to keep the pandemic from being a thing. He tried to “stop testing now” so the number of cases appeared low. He downplayed how dangerous covid was. He promised covid would be gone by Easter 2020. He said, “like a miracle, it will disappear.” For god’s sake, he told us to just inject bleach into ourselves and we’d be fine. Then he himself almost died of covid.

That was the Trump approach (and is it really so difficult to believe that other political leaders could be vulnerable to corruption and denialism during a pandemic?)

Let’s compare all that to the government’s handling of covid now.

We’ve been burdened with poor messaging and inept leadership ever since the Biden admin took over. (I mean, what is the correct approach to one’s covid vaccine schedule? Does anyone really know? Or does your brain turn to mush just thinking about the mental gymnastics involved there?)

But the troubles really started back in May 2021, when Biden and the CDC told everyone “if you’re vaccinated, you can ditch those masks!” just as a scary new variant was catching fire in India. This was woefully incorrect, and they knew it.

That strain later became known as the Delta variant, and it brutalized America in the summer and fall of 2021, killing at an alarming rate that we never really came to terms with.

There was no break. Omicron picked up where Delta left off. The U.S. government latched onto erroneous (and now completely debunked) reports that Omicron was somehow mild.

President Biden looked America in the eye and said you could safely gather for the holidays.

Then, between late November of 2021 and January 2022, Omicron killed over 800 children in the U.S.

By February more than 160,000 Americans had died of Omicron’s mildness.

By the time the dust settled from the original Omicron surge, it was clear as day this foe was not defeated. But we never paused to take stock of the national and global trauma we all went through. We forged ahead.

Everything reopened.

Mask mandates disappeared overnight.

A Trump-appointed federal judge with a history of anti-science views struck down the federal public transit mask requirement, despite most Americans being in favor of keeping it (a decision which has since been overturned by the conservative Supreme Court).

Biden didn’t put up a fight to that, by the way. He just let a Trump judge determine his own public health policy.

Throughout late winter of 2021 and spring 2022, the Biden admin seemed totally discombobulated and clueless about how to approach the pandemic.

During all of this, corporations were lobbying the government to narrow the already pencil-thin margins. Delta Airlines’ CEO publicly urged the CDC to lower the covid isolation time guidance from 10 days to 5 — even though the data strongly suggested many are contagious for longer than 10 days.

6 days later, the CDC lowered the guidance for isolation time from 10 days to 5.

Cities everywhere erased their protective measures. The remaining school mask mandates were dropped. Medical facilities as well. Even nursing homes. Everyone from children to the elderly were now hotboxing this Level 3 Biohazard pathogen.

This was all despite a majority of Americans agreeing covid was not under control. At the same time, health experts urged President Biden to reverse course from The Great Reopening. But those pleas went ignored.

The CDC “greenwashed” its covid map used to inform the public of the covid threat by region, moving from “community transmission” to the ambiguous “community levels”, and changed their definitions of high, medium and low, furthering the appearance of an improved situation.

The agency continued to publish the data within its old map, which was helpful for those of us in the know. It just buried that old map deeper on its website so those who dared look for it could all be wise to the rouse but be powerless to do anything about it.

You can see a comparison between the two maps from the exact same time period and the changes in definition of high community spread below. [Side note: I’ve included some commentary about some of the problems at the CDC and how to fix them in the footnotes of this article, if you’re interested**].

And just like that… covid was fake erased. And so disappeared all the masks and little social distance arrows on the floor and any other reminders that SARS2 was lurking.

Suddenly, there were hardly any protective measures in place anywhere. There was literally nowhere in the U.S. where vulnerable people could feel safe in public. But there was everywhere for the SARS2 virus to go and make itself feel all cozy and right at home.

From there, we reached a big bad baseline. The jumbo jet baseline.

Because Omicron got so horrifically bad, everything was compared to that winter’s surge instead of a comparison to the time period I would prefer: pre-2020.

Mass death became normalized. Since spring of 2022, the U.S. has averaged around 500-ish deaths a day from covid. Sometimes more. Sometimes a lot more.

Meanwhile we’ve reached data blackout. The current cases and death numbers I mention are all huge undercounts because each official report only includes about half of the states reporting. (The data will truly die in May 2023 when the U.S. ends the covid national emergency for reasons totally unknown other than just more sweeping things under the rug).

You’ll also recall from earlier when I mentioned that the CDC recently updated its definition of a covid death to include people who were killed by covid months or even years after their initial infection. Before this change, we were only counting those who died during acute infection. So, this adds to the gap on the covid death undercount.

In all honesty, we don’t know the true death toll. But it’s a lot more than the documented death count — which is currently an astonishing 1.2 million lives lost just in the U.S. in just over 3 years.

Then we get to fall 2022. President Biden went on national TV and said those 4 words.

“The pandemic is over”.

There it was. The President, to the surprise of everyone, even his own cabinet, unilaterally declared covid caput (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary).

Between that moment on 60 Minutes in September 2022, and the writing of this article in March of 2023, over 80,000 Americans died of covid (again, big undercount).

Covid wasn’t over for them.

Covid wasn’t over for their loved ones. And it wasn’t mild.

It turns out that Biden didn’t learn diddly squat from Trump’s mistakes at all. And when he originally promised to get covid under control and to follow the science, he was straight up lying. And hey, we have the receipts.

The most powerful person on earth saying the pandemic is over when it’s clearly not is no different than “like a miracle, it will disappear.”

As we should all know by now, you can’t wish away a SARS virus, not even when trying to do so while talking to Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes.

There’s nothing different between the Trump approach to the pandemic in 2020 and the Biden approach to the pandemic in 2023. It just sounds smarter.

That leaves us where we are today. We have a now constant churn of covid spread and death and everything in between. The result is the ultimate nightmare that everyone back in 2020 wanted to avoid: a pandemic that keeps going indefinitely because we didn’t take the appropriate steps to address it.

It’s important that we replay all of the timeline above because we need to document how things went down to counter the rewriting of history currently happening. In a sprint to normalcy, many have glossed over this grotesque turn of events, and we need to set the record straight.

So, the government continues to fail us. As I’ve laid out here in clear and undebatable ways, covid isn’t over, it’s not mild, and the powers that be would like you to deny these two facts.

I began this section with the thesis that our leaders are trying to concoct an illusion that the pandemic is over and using plausible deniability as cover. I don’t know how you can look at the order of things and disagree. But if you don’t buy that thesis, it doesn’t matter.

Whether the Biden administration and government leaders around the world are purposely downplaying covid or not, the result is the same. The problem at hand is the sum, not the equation. It could be shear ineptitude rather than shear carelessness. It still lands us with an intolerable amount of sickness and death.

Regardless of which it is, the truth is inescapable.

People are dying. They’re being disabled. They’re losing loved ones. They’re not able to work (hello labor shortage!). Kids are losing out on education. Everyone is being infected and reinfected with a SARS virus repeatedly. The economy is suffering. We have a 9/11 amount of death in the U.S. to this disease every week.

Those are the facts.

In that regard, we’re in a no different place than we were back in 2020. And for many people who now have lost someone, are stricken with Long Covid, or who don’t have safe access to goods and services, the pandemic is worse in 2023.

And even the Joe Biden of not long ago might agree. He and his administration told us last summer (weeks before he declared the pandemic over) that the “acceptable” amount of covid death would be 200 or fewer deaths per day.

We are miles away from that benchmark, and yet here he is ending the covid national emergency. Make it make sense.

We’ve covered how most people will take precautionary measures if the covid situation becomes dangerous. We already know that most people do prefer to be cautious when they perceive the threat to be high.

That’s where one of the government’s biggest failures has come. Our leadership has knowingly misled the public about the threat since the beginning and is still doing so now. If the government put our safety first and sent out the appropriate warnings about the threat, we would all be informed about the current state of covid spread and its dangers and many would take personal precautions on their own, regardless of mandates.

So, let’s make a change on our own. To be safe and healthy. To protect the most vulnerable. To support those in pain. To take back control and actually achieve what most are pretending has been achieved.

I urge you to change your tune about the pandemic. Reset your thinking, take personal measures of protection, re-invest in caring about those around you, and start holding leaders accountable for their abhorrent failures. Demand better. Don’t normalize or accept mass death.

Additionally, don’t let the government or anyone else place the blame on you with their bait and switch “you do you” routine.

We need a public health strategy from the people in charge driven by science and public health expertise. Instead, those leaders are skirting their responsibility and placing blame on you and all of us with this absurd “personal responsibility” nonsense.

And that’s bullshit.

You should be outraged. If it were your kid or relative or friend who died, wouldn’t you be?

A challenge for you

If you want to stop living in FantasyLand™ and be a part of change that helps actually turn the tide on this pandemic, rather than pretending it’s over, then I have a challenge for you.

It’s quite simple really. In my view, containing covid would not be very hard if we just tried.

While we need a collective effort, your individual choices can have a major impact on legitimately stopping covid’s carnage.

Now, before I issue my challenge for you, I want to remind you that you have a choice. You don’t have to go along with the gaslighting and accept mass death.

You can choose to get off this merry-go-round of horrors and stop being strung along into harm. You can choose to protect yourself over conforming to the fake normalcy. You can “live your life” but be safe while doing so. You can help actually end this pandemic. But you’re running out of time. The virus is winning. You need to make your choice now.

Here’s my challenge to you:

1. Wear a mask as much as you can — or at least more often. If you’ve thrown out all your masks, buy some more (I have some great mask tips if you’re looking for the right ones to order). And then start wearing them as much as you can. It’s not that much of an inconvenience for you to don a mask at the grocery store, and your mask makes it more safe for immunocompromised and disabled people to shop and protects the workers who work there (and of course, yourself!) Apply this thinking towards more activities in your every day life as much as you can.

2. Test before you gather. This is the simplest proactive step to take. It takes literally 2 minutes of work (tops) to stick a swab up your nose, mix it with the little vile and wait for the result. And at-home covid tests are FREE if you have insurance. In the U.S. each individual insurance account owner is entitled to 8 free covid tests per month. I personally recommend the Lucira at-home covid tests. They have the accuracy of a PCR lab test, give you results in 30 minutes, and they’re more simple to use than other rapid tests.

3. Spread the word (not covid). Tell people you know about the dangers you’ve read about here. Read about some more (remember: most studied disease ever). Talk about those too. The more people in the general population who are aware and feel compelled to advocate for better measures, the more our government will actually listen. Stop making covid a dirty word. The disease is far scarier than the word. It’s ok to talk about the dangers. You are not weak for being concerned about others. You are strong. At the end of the day, what I’ve presented to you here is SCIENCE. And if you ignore this science, well that makes you a science denier. You don’t want that, do you?!

4. Be an ally - If you believe yourself to be an ally to marginalized groups, but you’re not wearing a mask and taking other steps to protect people from covid, I got news for you: you’re doing it wrong. Disabled people, those who are immunocompromised, black, brown and indigenous people and other marginalized groups are disproportionately harmed by this disease. And if you say their lives aren’t worth protecting enough to inconvenience yourself, you can’t really call yourself an ally. That’s that.

5. Stop telling people like me to “move on”. This one’s a really easy challenge — the easiest. For those of us who want to protect ourselves and others from the third-leading cause of death, there’s nothing you can say to convince us to change our minds because, like I said, this is science. We refuse to deny the science. We’re not going to relax anytime soon. I’m sorry. So, stop expecting that we will suddenly say, “yeah, mass sickness and death is totally fine by me!” because, we won’t. But we implore you to come to our side. We need more people who are also not ok with mass sickness and death.

There you have it. 5 steps. Big impact.

If you are up for the challenge, let me know in the comments. I want to hear from you! Do you have any other tips that could help us regain command over the message and garner more covid protective measures?

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I sincerely hope this has given you a reality check if you needed it. Again, I welcome your thoughts in the comments. But please, let’s be kind to each other.

Love to you all.

Derek

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*In the article, I mention not feeling safe. Each person’s definition of safety is based both on a general agreement of what is safe as well as personal lived experiences. While from my vantage point, I haven’t felt truly safe in over 3 years, I’m writing from a place of extreme privilege. Many, many people are actually no doubt much less safe than I am. Not only do I want to acknowledge that, but it is one of the main driving forces behind why I wrote this article. Protect the vulnerable and marginalized!

**I believe the CDC is filled with brilliant scientists and decent public servants doing good and important work. But the leadership has been corrupted, which is not surprising. The corruption is due to politicization. Both the Trump and Biden administrations, and others, have used their overreach to pressure various agencies, including the CDC. This is not ideal in normal times. But it’s a disaster during a pandemic. The CDC should be totally independent and free from outside influence of any kind, political or otherwise. The first step in fixing things at the CDC would be to remove the current CDC Director, the lying, ableist, anti-science Rochelle Walensky, who should never work in public health again. Then the rules need to be changed on how the CDC’s leadership is created so that it’s elected by a panel of scientists and public health experts within the agency, rather than by political appointment. The President of the United States should not be the CDC Director’s boss. I can’t believe that needs to be said.