Commentary: We Let Our Guard Down on Covid
October 9, 2022
We are now entering the third winter of COVID and - if past is prologue - there will be a jump in cases as temperatures cool, people gather inside, and travel to other parts of the country for holiday gatherings increases.
It doesn’t have to be this way as we now have new, redesigned bivalent vaccines that offer the best possible protections against Omicron and its most serious COVID variants.
The problem is many Americans don’t know about it and our elected leaders - from the federal government on down - have done a terrible job communicating and educating the public.
Combine that with the relaxation and overturning of vaccine mandates, we could be heading into a perfect – albeit utterly avoidable – storm.
Sure, occasionally a public official will hold a press conference and get their shot in front of the cameras, but what happened to the actual follow through?
Maybe it's general COVID fatigue, or that those running for re-election see more value in discussing this virus as something in the rear view mirror after running last cycle on the federal government’s bungling of its initial COVID response. Or did the ugly anti-science anti-vaccine movement finally ground our elected and public health officials into submission?
The CDC, in my opinion, also instantly bungled the messaging battle when they labeled these new vaccines as “boosters,” instead of a new reformulated and more effective shot. (No one calls the yearly flu shot reformulation “boosters,” do they?)
Either way, there’s been an across the board abdication of responsibility.
COVID funding for the feds has dried up as attention has shifted to other priorities that may play better in the midterm elections.
Formally robust walk-in vaccination hubs have been shuttered. Smaller sites that targeted vulnerable or historically more vaccine-adverse populations seem to be a thing of the past.
This lack of effort seems to be having an effect.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that nearly half of adults have heard little or nothing about these new vaccines.
If you haven’t heard about it, what are the odds you’re going to get it, or that you will take the time to make sure your children get it? This means large swaths of the population are heading into the winter unprotected and providing fertile ground for the virus to spread and further mutate.
As shocking as that stat was, I wasn’t too surprised.
I grabbed dinner with two friends last weekend, both smart, educated, previously worked in government and happened to be on the front lines in the beginning of COVID. One had no idea that this vaccine was any different from the last one, and the other educated herself, but hadn’t quite found the time to get a shot. A third friend couldn’t join because he was battling his second COVID infection in several months.
If they weren’t able to grasp the facts or the urgency of these new vaccines, what chance do those who weren’t living and breathing COVID response for the last two years have?
With the lack of funding and the lack of initiative by government leaders across the board, the task of vaccinating has fallen back to traditional outlets such as pharmacists and doctor’s offices. I had no issues when I got my shot at our local Walgreens a few weeks ago. All in all it was as pleasant an experience as it gets.
But, as the pharmacist told me, I was also one of the few appointments they had on the books.
This lack of action is especially frustrating to me, because it's not like these public officials don’t know how to educate the public and make vaccine availability as widespread as possible. We did it before!
Speaking as a member of the past administration in New York, we worked night and day to stand up scores of vaccination sites and inform the public on the importance of getting the vaccine. It was tough and grueling work, but it worked.
But, we also weren’t alone, as many other state and local governments were doing the same exact thing. Now no one is.
It's getting late, but there is still some time to reverse course.
In a perfect world, Congress would once again make vaccine education a priority, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Even without federal funding, state and local governments can and must use their bully pulpits and place a much greater emphasis on education, amplifying these efforts with public service announcements, public facing government services and their social media channels.
State and local health departments can also once again partner with local healthcare providers in underserved and vaccine-hesitant populations to knock on doors, provide information, and schedule local pop-up vaccination sites.
Society has largely gotten back to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, which everyone should be happy about. However, nationally COVID still infects about 50,000 people (which in the era of home rapid tests is probably an undercount) and kills roughly 2,800 people a day.
Do nothing and that’s likely going to get worse as the temperature drops.
Doing something now could help break the cycle of the last two years, but these efforts need to begin yesterday.
That’s because winter is coming.
Rich Azzopardi is the founder and principal of Bulldog Strategies, a public affairs and crisis communications firm. He was previously senior adviser and director of communications in the Cuomo administration.