COVID's Over!!! Or is it???

Believing the lies and propaganda will kill you

If I could share a few words with you, they would be these:

Please get vaccinated if you haven’t. It’s the only way we’re going to get the edge on these dangerous variants and it will keep you from the worst symptoms and very likely save your life. The ferocity and speed of the mutations of this virus are startling. Once you are vaccinated, don’t let your guard down. You are protected but you’re not invincible.

And whether you are vaccinated or not, I urge you to get tested if you are feeling sick. Testing is so inexpensive, fast, and convenient right now. We were able to immediately find a location, drive up, self-swab our nostrils, and in thirty minutes get results. We were told by the doctor who tested our daughter, that many parents don’t get their children tested and allow them to spread the virus exponentially.

And please consider still masking after getting your vaccine. It may feel redundant or excessive, but it’s still vitally important to slow the spread of this virus.

We’re simply not out of this yet, and we need to take care of ourselves and one another.

• Pastor John Pavlovitz

Just as we’ve begun to celebrate- COVID’S OVER!!!- reality once again shows it can kick us all in the ass pretty much whenever it chooses to do so. It’s easy to think that COVID-19 is in our collective rear-view mirror. Here in Oregon, the state opened last week when we hit 70% of eligible residents with at least one shot of the vaccine. Washington opened up the week before for much the same reason.

What does this all mean? After losing more than 600,000 of our fellow citizens, are we now over the hump? Can we cast aside our masks, throw away our hand sanitizer, and get back in each other’s faces again? Is it really damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, and let’s get this show on the road back to normalcy again??

Not so fast, my friend.

John Pavlovitz relates his own experience, which should probably serve as a cautionary tale for all of us, even those of us who are fully vaccinated. Three-quarters of his family (the exception being his 11-year-old daughter) is fully vaccinated. After taking the pandemic seriously, closely following CDC guidance, and just generally trying to do the right things for the right reasons, they were ready to bust loose.

Sound familiar?

Since March 2020, the Pavlovitz family had been locked down, socially distanced, sanitized, and deadly serious (no pun intended) about beating COVID-19. They didn’t want to risk their health and well-being…and they certainly didn’t want to place others at risk.

My wife, 16-year old son, and I all registered for vaccines the first day we were eligible in order to give our family the best chance at protection moving forward. I was ecstatic to get jabbed. We all were. It felt like we could exhale for the first time in a long time.

After our waiting period was over, we were hopeful we could finally begin doing some normal things and left for our first family vacation since lockdown began. We were being as careful as we could while traveling, but as vaccinated adults it’s easy to let your guard down and to generally be less attentive than you had been regarding wearing masks and hand sanitizing and distancing. False security began to set in.

A few days into the trip our daughter started complaining about headaches, which we attributed to the heat and to the general fatigue of travel and activity. The next day, she began to get congestion and said her throat was sore. We expected her allergies were just flaring up, but we’d seen enough stories not to take any chances. We brought her to the local clinic and received a positive result for COVID-19. It was extremely disappointing but we knew that with her age, she likely wasn’t going to have escalating  symptoms. We immediately headed straight home and began family lockdown together. This is when we made our big mistake. With the rest of us fully vaccinated, we felt less vulnerable being home with our daughter without constant masking and distancing, but that illusion didn’t last very long.

The Pavlovitz family could understand why their 11-year-old daughter could contract COVID-19. She was still too young for the vaccine, but John and his wife had done their homework. They were confident their young daughter wouldn’t have to deal with severe symptoms and would recover quickly.

What they hadn’t anticipated was the family going four-for-four when it came to contracting the virus. Even with three of the four of them fully vaccinated, ALL of them came down with COVID-19. Who knows what the odds of that are (I’m guessing VERY long), but as Pavlovitz himself says, playing the lottery might not be a bad idea.

Man, with luck like that….

It’s easy to make light of the situation, but, thankfully, it appears that everyone will suffer only mild symptoms before recovering. The reality, though, is that what the Pavlovitz family has been through is no laughing matter.

Young children can, on rare occasions, suffer significant and sometimes long-term symptoms from contracting COVID-19. However, the odds favor the youngest Pavlovitz recovering quickly from mild symptoms.

For adults, being fully vaccinated is no guarantee of complete protection, but it’s clear that being vaccinated provides solid protection against some of the more severe symptoms of COVID-19. Current research shows that the unvaccinated account for approximately 99.5% of all COVID deaths. Despite this data, there are still millions who refuse to get vaccinated. How is that even possible?

There are still four states- Idaho, Wyoming, Mississippi, and Louisiana- where vaccination rates have not reached 40%. Thus, despite one of the deadliest and most contagious COVID-19 variants running rampant throughout this country and the rest of the world, millions of Americans reject the science.

It would be easy to chalk this ignorance and refusal up to natural selection, but that’s a pretty callous view of my fellow human beings. Having propagandized the pandemic AND the vaccines that can combat it, Far-right politicians and the Right-wing media poisoned the minds of vulnerable Americans. As a result, millions of Americans have chosen to believe lies and propaganda over science that could save their lives.

If I offer you something that will almost certainly keep you alive and has been proven safe, yet you reject it because you believe you know better, what am I to believe about you?

Thousands would almost certainly be alive today if not for their arrogance, ignorance, and rejection of “Liberal propaganda.” Sadly, we live in a political milieu in which “owning the Libs” is too often the highest and best value.

“Owning the Libs” shouldn’t be something worth dying for.

COVID-19 isn’t over, and there are still large segments of America’s population at risk for contracting the virus. Millions more will die of COVID-19 worldwide, as will thousands more here in the United States. Sadly, this will continue even as those of us who are vaccinated remove our masks, hug our friends and loved ones, and congregate in restaurants, theaters, and sporting venues.

I know; we’ve been at this for 16 months now. We. DESERVE. A. Break. That’s difficult to dispute, but deserving a break and the reality of where the world is are two very different things. Here in the United States, we’re incredibly fortunate to have three effective vaccines available…even if too many of my fellow citizens refuse a medical breakthrough that might save their life.

In the rest of the world, vaccines too often remain unavailable. In places like Brazil, India, and other Third World countries, COVID-19 is killing growing numbers of people because no vaccines are available. Here in America, vaccines are rejected because…well, because it’s best to “own the Libs.”

Americans should be taking advantage of having access to the best and safest COVID-19 vaccines of any country in the world. But, unfortunately, so much of our media and so many of our politicians have made it their mission to poison the minds of vulnerable Americans. As a result, the pandemic, the virus, and the vaccines developed to protect us from the worst aspects of the virus have been thoroughly politicized.

How bad is it? How about so bad that I’ve been reluctant to take off my mask in some public settings because I don’t want to create the impression that I’m a Republican. Politics and ideology should have no part in this conversation, yet they’ve been front and center since Day One.

Perhaps the worst thing about the pandemic is that it’s something that should’ve brought out the best in us. Instead, we’ve seen the absolute worst of too many Americans. The cult of selfishness and the lack of concern and regard for our fellow human beings has been a sad and distressing eye-opener for me.

It’s not “Ask what I can do for my country…because I want to help to make my country be the best it can be.” No, it’s “Demand that your country does for you because it OWES you”…for reasons that make sense to you but sound like selfishness and self-absorption to anyone else.

Then you have people like the Pavlovitz family, who did the right thing for the right reason…and still got caught by the virus.

The doctor who gave me my test results said that this Delta variant is frightening and unpredictable; showing a velocity and ease of transition that she wishes people understood and took seriously. She has been alarmed by how quickly it has spread and by how many people are still avoiding the vaccine, giving the virus an advantage it shouldn’t have at this point….

We’re simply not out of this yet[.]

Erin and I have been fortunate. Neither of us has contracted the virus, nor have we known anyone who’s become seriously ill from it. We’ve taken the proper precautions, followed CDC guidance, and gotten vaccinated as soon as we became eligible. We never believed that we knew more than the scientists.

Of course, Erin’s a nurse practitioner; her job is all about science. Even if that wasn’t the case, though, neither of us is arrogant enough to believe that our beliefs are somehow superior to empirical scientific fact. In a genuine sense, we’re among the millions of Americans who owe our continued survival to the virologists, researchers, and public health professionals whose life work is safeguarding public health.

We recognize the limits of our knowledge. We understand that our beliefs don’t supersede the medical community's accumulated empirical data, scientific knowledge, and experience. Of course, I can only speak for myself. Still, I resent those of my fellow citizens who believe themselves superior to, more capable than, and better equipped to determine whether they’ll get vaccinated.

How many thousands of Americans have died because of the toxic admixture of arrogance, ignorance, and self-importance? We’ll never know, of course, but it should be beyond doubt that the number is needlessly substantial.

When the history of this period is written, I suspect much of it will be focused on the fact that Americans were presented with the means to save themselves…and many deferred, believing they knew better than the scientists.

We’re not out of this. COVID-19 isn’t close to being done…and the people still dying are overwhelmingly those who’ve refused to get vaccinated. As much as I hate to think in these terms, perhaps there’s some justice in that. If you’re presented with the means to increase your odds of survival exponentially, and you decline that opportunity, you can’t claim to be surprised when you find yourself at death’s door.

Decisions have consequences. Sometimes, there’s no coming back from those consequences.

Please, if you have yet to be vaccinated, get your shots. Prove me wrong; nothing would make me happier.