Tisha Kinkhammer and her family.We are 12 months into this pandemic and Americans seem to be regressing in their efforts and attitudes toward preventing the spread of Covid-19.
It has indeed spread like a “forest fire” as Dr. Michael Osterholm predicted in June.
Though mask wearing has increased, social distancing and avoiding public and private gatherings has not. In addition to our lackluster approach to the basics of prevention, there are several other reasons for our abject failure in containing the Coronavirus:
In addition, Trump and his administration made the CDC tertiary sources of information about the pandemic and the Trump administration’s grasp on the narrative increased as the pandemic worsened. Messaging from the CDC was being altered by the White House to fit their more economically and politically-motivated version, which was described as a “slow suffocation of the agency’s voice, the meddling in its messages and the siphoning of its budget.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/us/politics/cdc-trump.html)
Ignorance There are so many examples. I have friends who are still hyper concerned about surfaces even though that isn't the foremost way of contracting the virus - wash hands regularly and vigorously, yes, but surfaces are not the primary way it is spread. I know many people who dine in restaurants, regularly, claiming they wear their masks while walking into the restaurant and then remove them as soon as they sit down. People are doing the same in gyms, they walk in the front door wearing a mask and then remove it as soon as they enter the gym area or a group exercise class. Another friend mentioned she cannot believe swimming in outdoor pools is still going on because "kids spit in the water and they can transfer it that way." I tried to explain that chlorine would kill the virus and that sharing air is what is concerning.
On social media I see photos posted of people living their lives as if we are in pre- or post-Covid times with no regard for the health and safety of others: no masks, no social distancing, no avoiding crowds. We’re cherry picking our way through preventive measures, choosing which one (s) best suit us even as the number of cases rises past 20,000,000 and is double that of India in 2nd place with over 10,000,000 cases. (https://covid19.who.int/)
Another example of this ignorance is the continuation of high school sports. The Ohio School Athletic Association (OHSAA) is permitting full-contact sports like wrestling to continue but athletes are not allowed to shake hands prior to or following a match. (https://thepostmillennial.com/ohio-okays-high-school-wrestling-but-bans-shaking-hands) Allowing wrestling to continue during a pandemic underscores not only our cluelessness about virus transmission but our disregard for the health and safety of people who live in our communities.
We need to practice ALL evidence-based preventive measures in unison to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. In a recent New York Times article, virologist Ian Mackay describes The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense as, “Multiple layers of protection, imagined as cheese slices, block the spread of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. No one layer is perfect; each has holes, and when the holes align, the risk of infection increases. But several layers combined — social distancing, plus masks, plus hand-washing, plus testing and tracing, plus ventilation, plus government messaging — significantly reduce the overall risk. Vaccination will add one more protective layer.”(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/coronavirus-swiss-cheese-infection-mackay.html)
Let’s hope there are some positive outcomes from this tragic time in our history. One such effect this pandemic has undoubtedly caused has been dubbed the “Fauci effect,” an 18 percent increase in medical school applications in 2020. (https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/942170588/fauci-effect-drives-record-number-of-medical-school-applications) We have great healthcare in the United States and some of the best scientists in the world. We rely on our scientific community to prevent or fix our fallibility regarding our own health and the health of others. Let’s hope that future medical school applicants are considering a career in public health. If this pandemic has shown us anything, it is that we need more public health awareness and education.
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Tisha Klinkhammer, a mother of three and a resident of Missouri City, Texas. Klinkhammer is a former resident of Edinburg, Texas and political science student at UT-Pan American. The column appears in The Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author. Klinkhammer can be reached via email at: vietnamvynhu@yahoo.com.
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