Looking ahead to a cold winter, we need Orphan Annie, that cloyingly optimistic Pollyanna of the Depression, to remind us that better times beckon. The past year was glum; and today, masked, we fear that our booster shots may not forestall COVID, that inflation may overwhelm us, that supermarket shelves will empty out, that truly “fake news” may crowd out the truth.
So here are some Pollyanna “buts” to counter the gloom.
Start with COVID. The statistics are daunting: to date, more than 750,000 Americans have died. Even among the vaccinated, breakthrough COVID cases mount. Even Vermont, where almost everybody is vaccinated, shows a high rate of new infections. The vaccinated and asymptomatic among us may harbor, and transmit, the virus. Patients who recover may suffer from “Long COVID.” COVID hovers over the start of 2022.
But the good news: we have a vaccine that, while it may not offer blanket protection from the virus, keeps victims alive. We have a vaccine for children, who thus far have had no protection, and indeed, may have been vectors, transmitting it to the adults in their midst. As for a cure, we don’t have one yet; we have some publicized but wacko ones, like ivermectin. But scientists are developing treatments that are wending their way from research to clinical trials and — we hope — to hospitals in 2022.
More daunting COVID news: The persistence of vaccine resisters (the ranks of COVID-deniers have understandably thinned) hold strong, keeping us from herd immunity. A cadre of people who work with elderly, ill, immune-compromised patients have refused the vaccine. Count nurses and EMTs among the lot, even though they put themselves as well as the ones they purportedly help at risk. Five times as many police officers have died from COVID than from guns since the pandemic. Right-wing politicos are tamping down not on the virus, but on the protective protocols, like vaccines and masks. In short, another surfeit of gloom.
But the good news: those numbers are falling. Credit the carrots, like cash bonuses, coupled with the sticks, like hikes in premiums and pink slips, as well as the legislative and employer mandates. Plus we have overt nudges. Routinely theater-goers must show “vaccine” passports. The federal government now publishes the vaccination-statistics for nursing home residents and staff. Many schools, regardless of political rhetoric, have insisted on vaccines for staff, students, and faculty. Families are excluding unvaccinated relatives from holiday dinners. Maybe, we hope, herd immunity hovers.
On the climate-change front, the news is sobering. The Earth is warming, dangerously, quickly. If there are climate-change-deniers among us, they live in caves. The United States, along with the rest of the planet, has seen floods, heat waves, fires, hurricanes, and horrific storms — the meteorological catastrophes that have brought “climate change” to national agendas. Countries have not yet done the hard stuff of righting this trend; but — a hopeful sign — countries are at last debating ideas, like rules for methane emissions and carbon tariffs. Soon even the cave-dwellers may notice that the walls of their caves are crumbling. Soon we may act.
Deaths from opioids continue to plague the nation. But at last we recognize that naltrexone, given at the right time, can save lives. All 50 states have enacted rules allowing its use, with varying restrictions on who can buy it, who can administer it. And at last a coalition of drug companies, physicians, and pharmacies has stopped shamelessly promoting opioids. (The lawsuits of 2021 surely dampened the enthusiasm to promote this ultimate Dr. Feel-Good elixir.)
As for the uninsured, we have more grim news: too many people with no insurance; too-high premiums; pre-existing condition clauses (six-months) allowed in Medigap policies, rising Medicare premiums. But the Affordable Care Act remains intact, after court challenges. And in this next legislative session Medicaid may expand to cover more people.
So 2022 will soon come. Let’s hope, like Annie, that the sun will shine tomorrow. Happy New Year.
Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2021
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