COVID-Cautious Americans Feel Abandoned

For all of 2020, Alex, a 28-year-old living in New York, followed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 guidance “religiously.” Then, in 2021, something began to shift. That spring, the CDC said it was okay for vaccinated people to ditch their masks in most places. But people were clearly still getting sick—including Alex, who got COVID-19 for the first time in late 2021 and later developed Long COVID symptoms. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “There was this reckoning moment where it was like, ‘Maybe the CDC is not being totally honest with us about the situation,’” he says. “‘Maybe they’re trying to present it like we can go back to normal when we can’t.’” For Alex, who asked to use only his first name to protect his privacy, that feeling has only deepened. The virus killed roughly 1,000 people in the U.S. during the week ending March 2 and has left about 7% of U.S. adults with Long COVID—but despite its continuing toll, real-time data on infections are limited, most mask mandates are gone, and isolation guidance has been scaled back. The officials making those policies say they are justified, given that almost all of the U.S. population has some immunity to COVID-19, death and hospitalization rates are far lower than they were a few years ago, and tools like rapid tests, antivirals, and updated vaccines are widely available. “...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news