The Media Is Seeing The Reality Many Others Already Knew
COVID is yet another seasonal virus that we will all live with.
I figured out in December of 2020 that COVID-19 was here to stay. It’s not going away. People will deal with it in the manner in which humans grapple with every other upper respiratory virus. Either you’ll get infected or you won’t. In the future, people will choose to get a COVID shot just like they do with the flu shot.
Don’t believe me? Read just a few of the mainstream articles written in the past few days to see how the narrative of impending doom changed to acceptance of reality:
Forbes Magazine: Not Everyone Wants To Be Vaccinated. I’m OK With That “Ultimately, if the purpose of a vaccination campaign is to help the country return to “normal,” then a crucial part of that normal is a respect for individual rights and personal medical autonomy. I was glad to receive the Pfizer vaccine myself. I might not necessarily agree with a particular person’s choice to receive the vaccine or not. But I fully defend their right to decide for themselves, based on their personal assessment of the relative risks and benefits.”
“If everyone who wishes to be vaccinated is able to do so, and everyone who wishes not is allowed to freely make that choice, then I would be more than ok with that — I would consider that an enormous success.”
Atlantic Magazine: Millions Are Saying No to the Vaccines. What Are They Thinking?
“Many people I spoke with said they trusted their immune system to protect them. “Nobody ever looks at it from the perspective of a guy who’s like me,” Bradley Baca, a 39-year-old truck driver in Colorado, told me. “As an essential worker, my life was never going to change in the pandemic, and I knew I was going to get COVID no matter what. Now I think I’ve got the antibodies, so why would I take a risk on the vaccine?”
Some had already recovered from COVID-19 and considered the vaccine unnecessary. “In December 2020 I tested positive and experienced many symptoms,” said Derek Perrin, a 31-year-old service technician in Connecticut. “Since I have already survived one recorded bout with this virus, I see no reason to take a vaccine that has only been approved for emergency use. I trust my immune system more than this current experiment.”
Others were worried that the vaccines might have long-term side effects. “As a Black American descendant of slavery, I am bottom caste, in terms of finances,” Georgette Russell, a 40-year-old resident of New Jersey, told me. “The fact that there is no way to sue the government or the pharmaceutical company if I have any adverse reactions is highly problematic to me.”
Many people said they had read up on the risk of COVID-19 to people under 50 and felt that the pandemic didn’t pose a particularly grave threat. “The chances of me dying from a car accident are higher than my dying of COVID,” said Michael Searle, a 36-year-old who owns a consulting firm in Austin, Texas. “But it’s not like I don’t get in my car.”
New York Times: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
“Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.”
The Atlantic Magazine: Don’t Wait for Herd Immunity
“With 200 million doses administered, America’s vaccine-distribution programhas been remarkably successful, but now it is hitting a wall. The rate of COVID-19 vaccinations is dropping; the percentage of people not returning for their second shot has risen. Fortunately, the number of Americans who are resolutely anti-vaccine remains small, a stubborn 13 percent, so finding ways to win over the rest remains an urgent task.”
“The underlying reality ought to be discussed more forthrightly. The United States may not reach the point at which enough people have become immune — by either getting vaccinated or having overcome a previous infection — and the coronavirus cannot spread in the population. This has been evident for some time. “We likely won’t cross the threshold of herd immunity,” Sarah Zhang wrote in The Atlantic in February. Yet the elusive possibility of herd immunity continues to shape Americans’ expectations. Getting there would simplify many questions about lifting mask orders and business restrictions, but mayors and governors who are reluctant to take such steps without a green light from scientists could be waiting for a long time.”
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 28 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Also, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Spongebob Squarepants, The Musical, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.
