If you have not received at least one vaccine shot and have waited the appropriate two weeks afterwards to resume more normal activities, do not resume the activities as if we are completely out of the woods and you have nothing to fear – I does not care how young or invincible you think you are.
We are in the midst of a make-or-break moment for the Bay Area and for California, and possibly one of the most dangerous moments of the pandemic for people who feel careless and cavalier about the state of affairs and their relative risk. It’s spring, pubs and restaurants are doing more business than in many months, and there’s still just as much COVID around us as in the sunny months of October just before the holidays, and in the nervous early days of the pandemic last spring. The number of cases remains low in San Francisco, it’s true, but people have also stopped being tested regularly and feel less paranoid – and the number of hospitalizations throughout the Bay Area has basically leveled off and even rose 5% on Monday. People are still getting sick. The variants take over. And there is nothing that really prevents California from having new cases except people who wear masks and do not get together indoors until they get their vaccinations.
Half of San Franciscans could enjoy a little more freedom in the coming weeks – according to Tuesday, 50% of the city allegedly received at least one dose of vaccine, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Hopefully this includes everyone who has to work outside their homes. This is great news, but it does not amount to herd immunity yet – and there are still unknowns about how well the vaccines perform against the P.1 “Brazilian” variant, or the newly introduced “Indian” variant that has just been identified in the Bay Area.
But with Governor Gavin Newsom’s big announcement Tuesday about the “full” opening of California for business by June 15, many of you may feel psychologically as if the worst days are behind you.
Everything can change, and people can still die, and experts from the infectious areas in the Bay Area warn that the house does not mean you can still celebrate if you have not received a vaccine.
The CDC says that young people in the Northeast and Middle East are causing outbreaks because they have not yet been vaccinated and that they are all wary of the wind. And as experts predicted two months ago, the B.1.1.7 variant first found in the UK has become the dominant strain in the US, as it is 50 to 70% more contagious. And if you feel young and dumb and need to be motivated not to catch the virus, a new study suggests that one-third of people with mild COVID cases suffer from long-term ‘brain disease’, including brain fog, anxiety, paranoia, and loss of odor or taste. Do you like the chance?
If you get infected, you run the risk of infecting your vaccinated or non-vaccinated friends – so-called ‘breakthrough’ cases where vaccinated people get sick are rare, according to experts according to the New York Times, but it still happens, and we still still do not know what is going on with the worst of the variants.
“For the person who has not been vaccinated and has never been infected, nothing has changed,” says Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF, spoke to the Chronicle this week. “What has changed is that the virus to which they may be exposed probably works better than the one that was in circulation in 2020.”
Everyone in San Francisco is eligible to receive a vaccine from next week, April 15, and hopefully the stock will accelerate and the process will be quick.
But until you are two weeks away from your first shot, at which point you have relatively decent immunity – or a great deal of immunity if you get the J&J shot – your behavior should not change. Do not party indoors. You probably should not eat indoors at restaurants. You should not travel everywhere and never be quarantined. You should not drink with other people outside a table at a bar outside every night.
If you have had one Pfizer or Moderna survey, your behavior should also only change significantly five to six weeks later or two weeks after the second survey.
And unfortunately, everyone still has to wear masks in public for most of this year. YES, it sucks. But it is not theater, as dr. Anthony Fauci told a stubborn Rand Paul last month – unknownness of the variants means none of this is theatrical.
Please let’s come June without a new growth, without the mayor London Breed and dr. Colfax needs to tackle another gloomy Zoom session and scold us all for fucking it. We are so close.
The expert infectious disease to UC Berkeley, John Swartzberg, who admittedly was one of the more cautious and pessimistic among local experts, tells the Chronicle: “I feel uncertain about what’s going to happen this month, in what direction things are going.” He says April will be ‘crucial’ for California, and ‘If we can get through this month without a significant increase, we’ll be in a very good state.’
So, let’s do it! Let’s go through this month. If you have not yet had a chance, try to spend a little more time at home than you would like, and keep doing outdoor things when you go out. Things can still go south for the Bay and you do not want to be partly blamed for it!
We have summer to look forward to. And a fall that is already starting to look full of events. Do not chill please.
Photo: Drew Coffman