Mondays with Mike: On the shoulders of two years of research

I’m as fatigued as everyone else when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. The omicron variant news made a lot of people feel like we’re starting over again. But, for a glass-half-empty kinda guy, I’m optimistic that we have the spiky little pest on the run.

I know that runs counter to news about case counts.  But I’ll quote CDC Director Rochelle Walensky during a recent NPR interview:

…we are standing on the shoulders of now two years of science and a lot of information…

In point of fact, we’re standing on the shoulders of decades of research when it comes to the vaccines, and hundreds of years of life science research. But her point was this: It’s amazing how fast and how much we’ve learned in the last two. Two years ago today, covid felt like a rumor. Two years ago, come this March, it took me five days to be approved to get a covid test, and once I did my drive-up swabs, it took another four days to get the result. I learned the result after growing so ill that I went to the emergency room. The positive test came in while I was there.

Before my hospital stay, I quarantined for days, staying in our bedroom and only coming out for food and drink. I carried a bottle of Clorox and spread a layer of bleach on anything I touched. People were wiping down grocery bags and groceries themselves. (Note: It was and STILL is important to wash your hands thoroughly and often, and to avoid touching your face.)

Now, even with the omicron rush, I can get a test and have results the next day (at the worst). I  know that the surface cleaning didn’t matter a whole lot. I know that masks help and that some masks help more than others. I have had three vaccines counting the booster.

Omicron appears to be much less dangerous than previous flavors, and if South Africa is any indicator, it’ll burn itself out pretty fast. And for those unlucky enough to have caught omicron, there is evidence that in a delicious irony, having had omicron appears to build resistance to the more dangerous delta variant.

Now, if we can get the laggards to get vaccinated, we can also shrink the number of petri dishes that covid can mutate in. At this point, if someone hasn’t gotten their jabs, probably no amount of information or persuasion is going to work. But these economists may be onto something: simple incentives and disincentives.

It’s been two years of a weary slog, but it’s also brought light to how remarkable we humans can be. And also: that the government matters, as explained in this Scientific American article. The government funded much of the research that led to the mRNA vaccines—though big Pharma will reap enormous profits from them.

That’s for another post.

In any case, I’m hopeful. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.