It ’ s Time to Rethink Your COVID-19 Risk Tolerance

The U.S. is taking a crash course in learning to “live with the virus.” Policymakers and health experts agree that we have migrated to a less-disruptive COVID-19 endemic phase. This has produced extensive commentary on what living with the virus, and achieving the “new normal” might look like—liberating some while confusing others. Many people have spent two years avoiding and fearing the virus and are now being advised that it’s safe to unmask and to resume a normal social life. For them, this has not ushered in a comfortable sense of natural transition, but instead has caused a national emotional whiplash. Psychologists call this avoidance conflict. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] CDC’s new look-up map tool for COVID-19 community risk-level attempts to balance key goals of preventing hospital overload and flattening the curve of serious disease. The agency’s previous map based on level of transmission reflected most counties as high-intensity bright red. The new map is mostly a reassuring low-risk green. Critics of this new approach say that the agency “seems to have moved the goalposts to justify the political imperative to let people get back to their normal lives.” What both the critics and supporters of the CDC’s new tool have missed is that—whether red or green—the tool doesn’t change our prior fundamental relationship to the virus which we have had since the beginning of t...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news