I’m Tired

It’s Friday, the end of a long week, halfway through a slog of a month, smack in the middle of a year that feels more like a decade. We’re all living it, and it’s exhausting.

Part of my fatigue comes from the Groundhog Day nature of coronavirus: certain questions keep reappearing over and over, only to be met with a new set of answers. Case-in-point: Can you get COVID twice? In March and April, a handful of articles landed at a definitive yes!, but most concluded Meh, even if you can, it’s probably no biggie because your immune system is already primed. There were even calls to issue immunity passports to people who had documented coronavirus infection, reasoning that these would be the people who could do everything from grocery shopping to returning to work. That notion got many of us – myself included – almost excited about the prospect of getting COVID (albeit it a mild case, ideally even asymptomatic) and getting it over with.

This virus has a way of making what’s old new again, and so it should be no surprise that the topic of immunity has reemerged, along with a completely different conclusion. These days, scientists talk openly about the fact that they don’t really know how long immunity to this new strain of coronavirus will last – it might be as short as a couple of months, especially among those “lucky” asymptomatic people who tested positive but never felt sick.

And this has spawned a new worry for people like me (and apparently you, since you have made your way this far down my newsletter) who devour pandemic-related content: the folks who have had the infection represent a whole new risk group in the current surge. I have watched as people who were sick in February and March and April now flaunt their immunity by gathering together, breaking the COVID rules of distancing and masking because those rules shouldn’t apply to them. But are they really immune? Maybe not. If this virus behaves like its cousin coronaviruses, then the antibodies produced to fight infection three or four months ago are already on the wane. So putting aside the optics of socializing during the pandemic, when most people don’t know – and don’t care about – your prior coronavirus status (side note: those optics are bad), if, indeed, people can get this thing again and again, they bear just as much social responsibility as the COVID-virgins when it comes to masking up, distancing, and all the rest. Whether or not you have been diagnosed with coronavirus in 2020, we all continue to be possible victims and potential vectors.

Speaking of vectors, are COVID-parties real? Recently, they’ve been covered by a series of news outlets: parties hosted by non-believers seeking to prove the virus is a hoax … until someone dies. But it turns out the parties themselves may be a hoax and, even though the NY Times has covered them, they didn’t really happen. This doesn’t negate the fact that people are still hosting parties (like dingbat YouTuber Jake Paul, or your neighbor whose summer bash may not be quite so big but it’s still irresponsible). To those who are turning up the house music and tossing the masks aside, I get that you don’t intend to spread coronavirus, but it’s time to get your head out of the sand because your Friday night fiesta may very well land someone in the hospital.

Hey vapers and smokers, need a new reason to kick the habit? Here’s a study looking at young people and asking the question how many teens and 20-somethings get severe COVID, and what might drive up their risk? The short answer: about a third of them are vulnerable to serious COVID, but only if they smoke or vape. Among non-smokers/non-vapers, the risk is cut in half. Major side note here: the rate of coronavirus positivity is rising fast among kid populations.

Let’s turn to schools, because there’s tons happening on that front. At the moment, every school across the country is scrambling to figure out how to open safely. Enormous school districts, like my local LAUSD, threw in the towel earlier this week, announcing schools would begin the year with remote learning. There just isn’t enough space to distance kids and adults safely, nor is there enough money to implement all of the other mitigations necessary to prioritize overall health. Then again, there exists such a massive digital divide and so many downstream consequences to the families of students who must learn from home, the solution to not reopen is as untenable as its opposite. Still, a domino effect was seen across California over the past few days, with San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento following LA’s lead. This has snowballed into such a big issue that today, Governor Newsom is scheduled to release his own set of guidelines for reopening, in addition to the ones that have come from the AAP, the CDC, the Department of Public Health, and others (and by the way, many of those recommendations conflict with one another). Meanwhile, lots of private schools plan to reopen, further highlighting the deepening schisms across our country. It’s crazy that we know less about our kids’ start of school today than we knew a week ago when I wrote about this. But at least one thing is becoming clearer: school entry point temperature checks are not the be all and end all. In fact, they may be worth almost nothing. So why do them?

The last coronavirus story of the day is a light one. If you feel like you need a dictionary to translate all the COVID-related medical lingo that comes your way each day, you’re not alone. I highly recommend the Lexicon for a Pandemic, and “body mullet” may be my favorite new phrase.

And by the way, given that it’s summer we’re pretty overdue for the requisite batch of sunscreen articles. I love this one. All hail tinted sunscreen!

Today feels like a 2-meme day. Enjoy!