We know a lot of you have already been spreading the word on this but we wanted to repeat this from the roof-tops because it’s one of the most urgent, life-and-death messages to get out right now: Whether through traditional media, social media, flyers, weekend meet-ups, casual conversations, at the water-cooler, wherever, it’s essential that we encourage PoC communities in the US to get booster shots as soon as they can--for which they’ve unfortunately been lagging in uptake--as protection with the BA2 COVID wave starting to accelerate through the country.
We have a couple nurses in our main precinct group and they’re already starting to see the same sorts of worrisome signs preceding previous outbreaks, and the data from the sewage samples is confirming that BA2 is here and rising fast, following on heels of what they’ve been seeing abroad. It is not mild (the dumb wishful-thinking about that led the previous omicron wave from BA1 to be one of our deadliest), and the best protection is masks and immunity boosting as the protection from the previous shots wears off. Even highly vaccinated and boosted communities abroad have been getting hit hard by BA2, and in addition to the fully unvaccinated, many of the sickest patients did get their first shots, but more than 9 months to a year ago in 2021, and haven’t gotten boosted. They’ve been esp. vulnerable to severe cases from BA2, especially if going around unmasked and in packed indoor spaces.
The good news is that one of the great recent public health successes for the US was the ultimately successful campaign, in 2021, to increase masking and vaccine uptake by African-American, Latino, native American, Middle Eastern/North African, and many Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities in the United States, all of whom had been initially lagging especially in vaccination, while encouraging better social distancing. The improved masking and vaccination in PoC communities in 2021, compared to 2020, is a big reason for the marked reversal in the demographics of severe COVID cases and hospitalizations we saw in 2021—with Blue States and Blue Counties largely spared, while Red States and Red Counties (especially the most heavily conservative Republican counties) having the highest rates of severe cases, in main part because Republicans more broadly refuse to mask or get vaccinated.
Unfortunately, though, the PoC gap has re-emerged for booster shots, for that PoC communities are lagging badly behind in uptake. And now given what we know about how dangerous and fast spreading BA2 is, this puts PoC at especially high risk of severe cases and winding up in the hospital (or worse) as BA2 makes its way across the country. Again this is life-and-deaths for a pool of potentially hundreds of millions of Americans and on top, the nurses in our group are confirming that BA2 seems to be an especially bad one for children, who must get vaccinated and mask up.
Again we have a reason to be optimistic going forwards on this because we ultimately were successful in 2021 in achieving great vaccine uptake and mask use in PoC communities, which contributed greatly to their historic improvement in pandemic survival (possibly the best improvement in survival and recovery numbers in any US pandemic recorded). Now that determination and good messaging is needed yet again to close the booster gap and get PoC communities protected from the coming wave. Please help spread the word as far and wide as you can, and let’s protect our communities!