WSWS.org article about book launch in Sydney
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/31/ybfo-m31.html
SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Rick at Sydney Book Launch--If no working class response, there is only death and disability...
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Sharon--Interview with IYSSE Member at Book Launch in Sydney, AU
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WSWS.org article re: this book launch
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/31/ybfo-m31.htm
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Monday, May 29, 2023
Sunday, May 28, 2023
Friday, May 26, 2023
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Monday, May 22, 2023
Friday, May 12, 2023
Ninety Years Since the Nazi Book Burnings - World Socialist Web Site
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Ninety years since the Nazi book burnings - World Socialist Web Site:
Ninety years ago today, the Nazis made an attack on culture and literature at the beginning of their reign of terror that led to the war of extermination and the Holocaust. Beginning May 10, books burned first in Berlin and later in other cities.
The works of Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Stefan Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky, Carl von Ossietzky, Erich Maria Remarque, Erich Kästner and many other writers were publicly burned. Everything humane, progressive and promoting solidarity was to be eradicated.
At the center of the book burning were the writings of socialists and Marxists. One of the fire oaths was: “Against class struggle and materialism, for Volksgemeinschaft and an idealistic attitude to life! I hand over to the flame the writings of Marx and Kautsky.”
Also burned were the writings of Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, August Bebel, Franz Mehring, and also those of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the two leaders of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia.
Trotsky understood more than any other the character of Nazi terror. “The bonfires which burn the impious literature of Marxism light up brilliantly the class nature of National Socialism,” he wrote in “What is National Socialism?”
And further: “Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism.”
The anniversary of the book burning must be a warning to workers and youth worldwide. Today the same contradictions are developing that led to barbarism in the 20th century. The danger of fascism and world war is back.
Above all, the ruling class in Germany continues its crimes of the past. Eighty two years after the war of extermination against the Soviet Union, German tanks are rolling against Russia again.
And the rehabilitation of fascism is also well advanced. At Berlin’s Humboldt University, where the 1933 book burning originated, Nazi crimes are downplayed and justified.
“Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasn’t vicious. He didn’t want people to talk about the extermination of the Jews at his table,” Humboldt professor Jörg Baberowski told Der Spiegel in 2014.
In the same interview, Baberowski backed Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte, who had already justified National Socialism in the 1980s as an understandable reaction to the Russian October Revolution.
While Nolte was roundly condemned for his theses at the time, the enemy for the ruling class today is once again unanimously on the left. For its criticism of Baberowski and the return of German militarism, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party in Germany-SGP) has been placed under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution [the German Secret Service].
As in the 1930s, the bourgeoisie is horrified by the growing radicalization and movement to the left among workers and youth. It fears that this opposition is increasingly coming together with the SGP’s international socialist perspective.
Ninety years ago, the workers were prevented by their leadership from taking up the struggle against Hitler. This time it is necessary to ensure that Heinrich Heine’s warning, “wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings,” does not prove true again.
Necessary for this is the building of the SGP and the Fourth International as a new mass socialist party that will unite the working class internationally and end capitalist barbarism once and for all.
Thursday, May 11, 2023
COVID-19 Is No Longer an Official Emergency. Is That the Right Call? | The Brink | Boston University
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COVID-19 Is No Longer an Official Emergency. Is That the Right Call? | The Brink | Boston University:
Interview with Ellie Murray, a BU School of Public Health assistant professor of epidemiology and a faculty affiliate at the University’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research.
EXCERPT:
With all these declarations ending, are you sticking with the precautions that you’ve been taking for the past couple of years—wearing masks, avoiding restaurants?
Yeah, I’m sticking with it. I mask when I’m in public indoor spaces. In terms of indoor dining, I’m generally avoiding it. The only exception would be if it’s a place where it’s relatively empty. And I have this little portable CO2 monitor, which can tell me if the ventilation is good, so sometimes you can find somewhere where the ventilation is very good, then I might eat indoors.
Monday, May 08, 2023
Sunday, May 07, 2023
Saturday, May 06, 2023
SARS-CoV-2 and "Textbook" Immunity - John Snow Project
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SARS-CoV-2 and "Textbook" Immunity - John Snow Project
EXCERPT:
The term ‘textbook’ should not be comforting. Textbooks tell us we can expect SARS-CoV-2 to have a detrimental impact on human health and life expectancy if it is allowed to continue to spread and reinfect the population.
A new trope that aims to minimize the seriousness of COVID-19 has been doing the rounds recently – that SARS-CoV-2 is a ‘textbook’ virus that behaves like other common viruses. This trope promotes the views that first, nothing extraordinary has happened with SARS-CoV-2’s establishment in the human population, and second, that uncontrolled transmission is actually beneficial, because it will somehow build immunity and make subsequent reinfections inconsequential. Talking about SARS-CoV-2, one social media commentator stated, “As with other respiratory viruses, symptomatic re-infections tend to sharpen – not weaken, your immunity.”
There are two key issues in such statements. The first is the fundamentally misguided idea of a virus being or not being `textbook’ – viruses objectively exist independent of human textbooks, and if textbooks make false generalizations, then the problem is with the textbooks, i.e. the properties of each novel virus need to be considered on their own, not with a reference to a textbook model. The second is whether infection of SARS-CoV-2 or, indeed, any other virus is a net benefit because it ‘sharpens’ one’s immunity, and whether any ‘textbook’ virus in fact behaves in the claimed way.
It is worth noting that this is not a new assertion. Infection as a conduit for immunity has been made by commentators throughout history, and it is usually raised as an argument to counter any impetus for change. It was raised as a reason not to treat water and has been used by people resistant to mass vaccination campaigns1,2. Some members of the medical and scientific community, and a significant proportion of the general public, believe exposure to pathogens through infection toughens us and is a net benefit to our health.
They could not be more wrong, and ill-informed statements about infection sharpening immunity show a lack of understanding of what the textbooks actually tell us about infection.
Friday, May 05, 2023
A Kingly Proposal: Letter from Julian Assange to King Charles III
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Julian Assange speaking in 2009. (Photo: New Media Days / Peter Erichsen / Creative Commons)
A Kingly Proposal: Letter from Julian Assange to King Charles III: WikiLeaks founder calls for “mercy” from King Charles as the political prisoner highlights England’s jail conditions.
To His Majesty King Charles III,
On the coronation of my liege, I thought it only fitting to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom: His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh.
You will no doubt recall the wise words of a renowned playwright: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”
Ah, but what would that bard know of mercy faced with the reckoning at the dawn of your historic reign? After all, one can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.
Your Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is located at the prestigious address of One Western Way, London, just a short foxhunt from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. How delightful it must be to have such an esteemed establishment bear your name.
It is here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdom’s record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe. As your noble government has recently declared, your kingdom is currently undergoing “the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century”, with its ambitious projections showing an increase of the prison population from 82,000 to 106,000 within the next four years. Quite the legacy, indeed.
As a political prisoner, held at Your Majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I am honoured to reside within the walls of this world class institution. Truly, your kingdom knows no bounds.
During your visit, you will have the opportunity to feast upon the culinary delights prepared for your loyal subjects on a generous budget of two pounds per day. Savour the blended tuna heads and the ubiquitous reconstituted forms that are purportedly made from chicken. And worry not, for unlike lesser institutions such as Alcatraz or San Quentin, there is no communal dining in a mess hall. At Belmarsh, prisoners dine alone in their cells, ensuring the utmost intimacy with their meal.
Beyond the gustatory pleasures, I can assure you that Belmarsh provides ample educational opportunities for your subjects. As Proverbs 22:6 has it: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Observe the shuffling queues at the medicine hatch, where inmates gather their prescriptions, not for daily use, but for the horizon-expanding experience of a “big day out”—all at once.
You will also have the opportunity to pay your respects to my late friend Manoel Santos, a gay man facing deportation to Bolsonaro’s Brazil, who took his own life just eight yards from my cell using a crude rope fashioned from his bedsheets. His exquisite tenor voice now silenced forever.
Venture further into the depths of Belmarsh and you will find the most isolated place within its walls: Healthcare, or “Hellcare” as its inhabitants lovingly call it. Here, you will marvel at sensible rules designed for everyone’s safety, such as the prohibition of chess, whilst permitting the far less dangerous game of checkers.
Deep within Hellcare lies the most gloriously uplifting place in all of Belmarsh, nay, the whole of the United Kingdom: the sublimely named Belmarsh End of Life Suite. Listen closely, and you may hear the prisoners’ cries of “Brother, I’m going to die in here”, a testament to the quality of both life and death within your prison.
But fear not, for there is beauty to be found within these walls. Feast your eyes upon the picturesque crows nesting in the razor wire and the hundreds of hungry rats that call Belmarsh home. And if you come in the spring, you may even catch a glimpse of the ducklings laid by wayward mallards within the prison grounds. But don’t delay, for the ravenous rats ensure their lives are fleeting.
I implore you, King Charles, to visit His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king. As you embark upon your reign, may you always remember the words of the King James Bible: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). And may mercy be the guiding light of your kingdom, both within and without the walls of Belmarsh.
Your most devoted subject,
Julian Assange
A9379AY
The 1619 Project and the New York Times’ Promotion of the Racialist Ideology of Ukrainian Nationalism - World Socialist Web Site
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EXCERPT:
“For many Ukrainians,” Bubola writes, “the idea of saving soldiers’ sperm is at once personal and patriotic … It leaves open the possibility, at least, of preserving Ukrainian bloodlines even as the Kremlin insists that Ukrainian statehood—and by extension Ukrainians as a separate people—is a fiction.”
The phrase “preserving Ukrainian bloodlines” appears in the article without irony, qualification or quotation marks. Indeed, the whole thrust of the passage in context is that Ukrainians, in fact, are “a separate people,” contrary to the claims of “the Kremlin.”
Behind this talk of “Ukrainian bloodlines” and Ukrainians as “a separate people” is an utterly toxic racialist ideology that was developed by the Ukrainian fascists parallel to German and other European fascist movements in the period leading up to the Second World War. The idea, which the Times does not dare to say out loud, is that “pure” Ukrainian blood will be corrupted if it is “mixed” with the blood of “impure” or “subhuman” people, including Russians, Jews or Roma people who are not part of the Ukrainian “national identity” being extolled by the Times.
The editors of the Times know very well that the government-backed “bloodline-preserving” endeavor they are celebrating is tainted by precisely that brand of poison. In the service of war propaganda, the Times not only conceals the hateful subtext but actively glorifies these conceptions, which have their American counterpart in the racist “great replacement” theory promoted by figures such as former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. The Times passes this filth on to American readers with an approving quote from a Ukrainian politician who claims that it represents “a continuation of our gene pool.”
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Friday, April 28, 2023
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Over? – Cleveland Clinic
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Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Over? – Cleveland Clinic
No, the COVID-19 Pandemic Isn’t Over
If you’ve been watching the news recently, you may have seen that May 11, 2023, is going to be an important day. That’s the day United States President Joe Biden will formally declare both the public health emergency and the national state of emergency for COVID-19 over.
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Clinic products or services. Policy
Does that mean the pandemic is finally gone? Should we be celebrating?
Unfortunately, no. The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t going anywhere. What’s changing is the U.S. government’s approach, which means prevention, care and treatment are about to become more expensive in America.
We spoke to pulmonologist Raed Dweik, MD, about what ending the COVID-19 emergency declarations means for U.S. healthcare providers, insurance companies, the government and for your day-to-day life.
Epidemic vs. pandemic vs. endemic
To understand why the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, let’s do a quick refresher on the definitions of “epidemic,” “pandemic” and “endemic.”
- An epidemic involves an increase in the number of cases of illness, but is limited to a specific geographic area — that area could be as small as a single town and as large as a country.
- In a pandemic, there’s an exponential increase in cases occurring in multiple places around the globe. There have been many pandemics throughout our history, including in the recent past. The 2009 outbreak of H1N1 — also known as swine flu — was a pandemic. It caused more than 280,000 deaths worldwide in a single year. It was a massive tragedy, but it pales in comparison to the devastation COVID-19 has caused.
- An infection is endemic if the case numbers stay relatively consistent over time and the illness stays localized to a specific place. For example, malaria is endemic in India.
As you might imagine, it’s hard to know when exactly a pandemic is over. It’s far easier to know if an epidemic has ended (or become endemic). Why? Because all the epidemiological data is concentrated in a single place.
In the case of pandemics, you’re relying on each country to do two different things. First, they have to provide an adequate public health response to the crisis. Second, they have to gather and share accurate data about the impact.
At what point is COVID-19 no longer a pandemic?
So, when is a pandemic “over,” and who decides? Frankly, the answer to that question depends on who you’re asking. U.S. healthcare providers like Dr. Dweik often look to the World Health Organization (WHO) for determinations like that.
“Whether the pandemic is over or not is above my pay grade,” Dr. Dweik explains. “The WHO has to declare whether a pandemic is over because they take into account what’s happening and the number of cases in the rest of the world.”
What the WHO says about COVID-19
So, what does the WHO think about COVID-19? As of January 30, 2023, the WHO still considers COVID-19 to be a pandemic, or to use their phrasing, “a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).”
But they did acknowledge that we’re in the midst of a “transition point.” The virus isn’t the threat it was during the omicron surge of 2022, and cases are declining. It’s possible that the WHO will declare the pandemic over sometime this year. But there are several reasons it feels the virus remains an emergency at this time.
The number of cases remains high
According to the WHO’s COVID-19 tracker, the week of April 3, 2023, saw health authorities around the world report 525,841 cases of SARS-Co(v)2.
That’s a huge step down from the virus’ peak, when the number of people reported sick in a week was nearly 45 million. But it’s not a small number by any means — especially when you consider the global decline in reporting.
Take the United States as an example. These days, it’s unlikely you’re reporting your COVID-19 infection to public health authorities. That data is only being collected from people who are sick enough to seek out medical attention.
The death rate is still high
It’s sobering to think about: 6,889,743 people have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic that we know about. The real number is far higher.
While the death rate has dropped significantly from its peak in January 2021 — when more than 102,000 people died in a single week — the numbers still fluctuate. That’s partly because of the virus and partly because reporting procedures differ from country to country. For example, only 260 people officially died of COVID-19 on April 4, 2023; but 2,438 deaths were reported just three days earlier. To put that number in perspective, the worst day on record saw approximately 20,000 COVID-19 deaths reported.
COVID-19 looks different country-to-country
From the beginning, the COVID-19 pandemic has looked dramatically different based on where you’re living and the information being made publicly available. Most recently, China faced a major surge in COVID-19 cases — a side effect of lifting public health restrictions and poor-quality vaccines.
Why does that variation impact COVID-19’s classification? Simply put: If the virus is circulating, it’s also mutating. As we learned during the delta surge, some of those mutations can have devastating consequences.
The global risk remains high unless and until all countries are able to prevent, test and treat equally. The WHO is taking the current inequalities into account when it says the pandemic is still ongoing.
Healthcare systems around the world remain stressed
The COVID-19 crisis pushed healthcare systems and providers to the brink around the world. Despite valiant efforts to rise to the occasion, no country’s health infrastructure escaped unscathed.
While COVID-19 admissions are down in U.S. hospitals right now, the combination of COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the flu means most hospitals are still operating at (or over) max capacity. Healthcare providers have left the profession due to burnout. Many hospitals had to close their doors or were bought out. The same is true in healthcare systems around the globe.
The WHO has concerns about what will happen if COVID-19 deals the
world another body blow. It’s concerned, in part, because countries
aren’t collecting enough data for health officials to know exactly how stressed their pandemic-response infrastructure is.
What the end of the U.S. states of emergency mean
The WHO may decide if the pandemic is over, but individual governments are also assessing the state of the COVID crisis — and planning accordingly.
In the United States, President Joe Biden is planning to announce the end of both the national state of emergency and the public health emergency declarations on May 11, 2023.
It’s important to note that those emergency declarations are federal. Depending on where in the United States you live, there may still be state, municipal or county states of emergency in place. While local regulations made a big difference in the early months of the pandemic, the suspension of the federal declarations will have a bigger impact on your day-to-day life at this stage.
“The federal emergency declarations back in 2020 affected all of us,” Dr. Dweik notes, “but we may have not known what they really meant.” He breaks down the changes we can expect to see in our daily lives, in healthcare and in government.
How will the change impact things
First things first: We need to re-emphasize that for all that’s about to change, one thing isn’t changing: COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still reporting more than 100,000 cases in the US every week, resulting in hospitalizations and deaths in the thousands. The numbers are continuing to decline, but the virus isn’t in the rearview mirror by any means.
What’s changing isn’t the virus, but our country’s response to it. In other words, our experience of the virus is about to look very different. Here are a few of the things you can expect will change on May 11, 2023:
Cost and coverage
The most immediate impact you can expect to see is on your wallet. “The cost of COVID testing, treatment and vaccines — all of that has been free at point of service because the federal government was paying for it,” Dr. Dweik says.
Now, those costs are going to be borne by insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid … and you. How much you end up paying will vary based on the kind of coverage you have. If you don’t have any form of coverage, you’ll be paying 100% out of pocket for all COVID-19-related expenses.
That means now is the time to order free COVID-19 tests through COVID.gov. You should also get vaccinated or boosted, if you haven’t already.
State expenses
In the United States, individual state healthcare budgets are not all the same. Dr. Dweik explains that during the state of emergency, the federal government put Medicaid coverage-matching protocols into place to make the financial strain easier for individual states to bear. Medicaid coverage-matching will stop when the national and public health emergency declarations expire. How big an impact that will have will vary from state to state.
Telehealth
“The big change for U.S. physicians and healthcare providers is going to be telehealth,” Dr. Dweik states.
For many of us, telehealth became a common feature of COVID-19-era medical care because the regulations governing the practice had to change to prevent the virus’ spread. According to Dr. Dweik, that’s going to change with the end of the state of emergency.
“Rules around telehealth were relaxed during the COVID pandemic, like who providers can see under what circumstances, whether you can see new patients or patients who are out of state, what platforms you can use for telehealth. That all got relaxed,” Dr. Dweik explains.
In the absence of a state of emergency, the rules governing telehealth before the pandemic will go back into effect. Your healthcare provider may continue offering telehealth appointments, but only for some kinds of appointments — and with stricter rules about what your provider can and can’t do.
That’s particularly bad news for rural areas with limited access to hospitals and other healthcare services.
Emergency use authorizations
One of the reasons COVID-19 vaccines and treatments became available so quickly was because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted manufacturers an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). “Most people don’t realize that, if there’s no state of emergency, there’s no emergency use authorization for new treatments,” Dr. Dweik says.
It’s important to keep in mind that the COVID-19 vaccines most commonly used in the U.S. (manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer, respectively) have already received full FDA approval.
HIPAA and licensure
One of the enduring images from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was planes full of healthcare providers arriving in New York City — then, the epicenter of the pandemic — to tears and rapturous applause. They came from around the country and around the world to support the city in a moment of need.
The national and public health states of emergency made that humanitarian effort possible.
In normal circumstances, doctors and healthcare providers are licensed to practice medicine by state boards. That means they can only work within that state. After May 11, 2023, doctors and providers won’t be able to do in-person or certain telemedicine appointments out of state.
The COVID-19 state of emergency also meant healthcare providers were
less concerned about HIPAA liability than usual. HIPAA stands for the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It’s the U.S. law
that governs patient privacy.
“If doctors do a visit over a phone, for example, that’s not
HIPAA-compliant,” Dr. Dweik explains. “Because patients could not come
and see us during the COVID emergency, that kind of thing was allowed
for a while. But it’s not OK under normal circumstances. Providers are
supposed to use a secure platform to communicate with patients.”
Once the state of emergency ends, providers will once again have to adhere to the letter of the law to protect themselves against legal action.
Who’s most impacted
We may not all be familiar with the concept of “social determinants of health,” but COVID-19 made its meaning impossible to ignore.
Health outcomes vary from person to person. But at a macro level, health is often determined by our political, socioeconomic and cultural circumstances. That’s why the COVID-19 death rate was drastically higher for indigenous people, people of color, older people, immunocompromised or chronically ill people and people living with disabilities.
The impact of ending the national and public health states of emergency is going to impact all of us, but underprivileged groups will once again fare worse.
“They’ll be the most affected again because members of underprivileged groups are the ones who are most likely to be uninsured or underinsured,” Dr. Dweik states. “The vaccines, the tests and the treatment are no longer going to be free at the point of service. If you are not insured, that’s a huge burden.”
He continues, “People who were already suffering before the pandemic will suffer again. In a way, the state of emergency helped mitigate some of the healthcare problems that we always had as a country. Lifting the state of emergency means we’ll go back to the situation before the pandemic, but with the added pressure caused by the remnants of the pandemic.”
Long COVID
One of the biggest question marks moving into a post-emergency era: Long COVID.
“It’s a conundrum for everybody,” Dr. Dweik says. “For the patients, for the health care providers — I suspect for insurance companies and the government, too. We don’t quite know what to do with long COVID. We have clinics for it, we’re researching it and we’re definitely trying to take care of people who have it, but it’s going be harder and harder as insurance coverage goes down.”
This is a problem that will only grow with time. “Long COVID is not only not going away, it’s increasing,” Dr. Dweik explains. “Some studies suggest one in every three to five patients with COVID could end up dealing with long COVID. And it can be debilitating for some people.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued formal guidance on long COVID as a disability covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 2021. The guidelines say that some people living with long COVID may meet the definition of a disability under the law. That would entitle them either to workplace accommodations or — for those who can’t work — disability benefits.
But those guidelines are just that: Guidelines. And applying for disability is a long process. Dr. Dweik is hopeful that continuing research on the condition, combined with political advocacy, will lead to stronger protections for people living with long COVID.
COVID-19 protection in the future
While the national and public health states of emergency will be a thing of the past come May 11, 2023, COVID-19 will still be with us. As a pulmonologist, Dr. Dweik knows firsthand that protecting yourself against COVID-19 remains vitally important.
“The basic advice still applies,” he says. “Wash your hands. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Avoiding crowds is probably the most important thing. If you have to be involved in group activities, have them either outdoors or in large, well-ventilated spaces. And wear your mask.”
We don’t hear about masking as often now, but Dr. Dweik is quick to emphasize their importance. “One thing we learned from the pandemic that I hope is not lost on us is that, in the first year of the pandemic, we didn’t have any flu. The flu disappeared. That’s because we were wearing masks. It was a natural experiment that showed us masks work.”
That’s why Dr. Dweik advocates for mask usage throughout the respiratory virus season and flu season, which, roughly, runs from October to March.
Preventive measures are important, but it’s equally important to respond to a positive COVID-19 test. “You need to keep on the lookout,” Dr. Dweik urges. “If you don’t feel well, make sure you tell your doctor early because there are treatments now that weren’t there at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Those treatments can reduce the risk of hospitalization and the duration of the disease.”
The bottom line
On May 11, 2023, the Biden Administration will announce the end of both the national and public health emergency declarations in the United States. While case numbers and death rates associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are declining, the pandemic isn’t over. Ending the emergency declarations simply means that the governmental response to the pandemic is scaling down.
You can expect to see costs associated with vaccination, testing and treatment go up. Rules around telemedicine, licensing, privacy and liability that were relaxed during the state of emergency will also go back to the way they were. The end of the state of emergency will impact everybody. But un- and underinsured people, communities with limited access to healthcare and people living with long COVID will feel the change the most.
That means protecting yourself against COVID-19 infection is as important as ever.
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