This is just our periodic reminder and call to action on encouraging COVID-19 booster uptake and mask usage for chronically underserved PoC communities—particularly in community centers, local media, social media, school workshops and multilingual neighborhood announcements where we had great success with the initial COVID vaccine drive in mid-2021—but now with even more urgency since the newest COVID-19 wave is now upon us with a vengeance. From reports by the HCW’s in our group, it’s shaping up to be a monster, and dashing hopes that the US would somehow evade the surge that hit the UK and other countries. Both cases and hospitalizations are spiking all over the United States, and in fact the real numbers are even higher than the map indicates—much higher—due to undercounts from home testing and inadequate COVID testing facilities and reporting esp in the Great Plains region and down here in Florida, where the whole southern portion of the state was moved into the highest risk zone after a “processing error” was corrected. Hospitals in Pennsylvania are already now over 80% full and the rest of the US is following suit, but now with a much more stretched and thinner reserve since so many nurses, doctors and other hospital staff have quit from the stresses of the previous COVID waves. It’s therefore all the more urgent to get the word out for people to get a booster shot if they haven’t already, and to get solid, highly protective masks (esp at the level of N-95’s and KN-95’s) for large indoor gatherings, particularly where ventilation is inadequate. It’s doubly important for PoC communities for whom the rate of boosting has greatly improved over just a couple months ago, but is still lagging esp. compared to the high levels of vaccine uptake that protected them from the delta wave in mid-2021.
In case this is a factor in the still-lagging levels of booster uptake for PoC communities and throughout the US in general, we wanted to combat a couple misconceptions here. The media has been reporting a lot of course on the bad side effects some people have been having with some of the vaccines—blood clots with J&J, myocarditis with Moderna—and it’s true that the available vaccines aren’t nearly as well matched as they used to be for the omicron sub-variants now surging up, especially BA.2.12.1 and the other variants spiking in hosts within the US (such as BA.4). But that’s beside the point—even if the vaccines aren’t as effective as they were in March of 2021 and people still get infected, the available boosters still provide great protection to help COVID-infected Americans stay out of the hospital, which just having immunity from a previous infection does not. That’s what matters most here, not only to protect the affected but also to preserve precious hospital capacity and healthcare workers who are again being stretched. To be clear on it, just having the initial two-shot sequence is not enough anymore, particularly for people who got their initial vaccine doses back in early 2021. As one of the nurses in our group pointed out, in her hospital in a heavily vaccinated area, although the unvaccinated are still disproportionately admitted, a plurality of the COVID patients are vaccinated but not yet boosted. For reasons having to do with the spike protein that are a bit hard to explain, the immunity of the initial shots wears off after a few months (as it did for the delta variant) and then the omicron and other variants are both heavily mutated and good at immune evasion.
But the booster—any of the ones currently available in the US—even if not the best match for the newer variants, is still very good at providing that extra dose of protection to minimize hospitalization risk. There’s ongoing work on improved vaccines but for now, what we have is more than enough to help keep people shielded from the worst ravages of acute COVID, and it’s nothing unusual to get a booster once a year or every six months anyway—we already do that with flu (and some other microbes, for many occupations). And remember, the threat from COVID-19 isn’t just from the acute illness, as horrific as its toll has been (with a death toll of over a million Americans and millions more hospitalized). It’s also from way all those hospitalizations severely stress US healthcare, causing staff shortages as more and more doctors, nurses and other HCW’s leave medicine. And an even greater threat still is from long COVID, and for that recent medical reports have been alarming as to the high frequency and severity of the damage that COVID does to organs and health longer term, in fact there was a recent report in the Nature science journal (thanks to our doc contact down in Tallahassee for ending this over) showing that even after mild cases in young healthy Americans, there’s a huge increased risk of death and severe damage to organs in a large percentage of patients! This is probably a big reason the life expectancy in the US has dropped so sharply and much worse than other countries hit by COVID, and continues to fall—COVID in all its variants keeps re-infecting variants, and esp for those without boosters or don’t wear masks, they’re getting a large amount of viruses that makes them more vulnerable to this damage to all their tissues. The vaccines don’t fully prevent this risk but they do mitigate it, but that’s again why the boosters are so important, since there won’t be much remaining protection from the original vaccines at this point against the new variants. This is also why it’s equally important to wear a mask in crowded indoor settings, esp. an N-95 or KN-95, to further reduce the hospitalization and long COVID risk.
The main point is that the BA.2.12.1 COVID wave is upon us and we don’t have the luxury of waiting—for those who haven’t gotten boosted, it’s critical to encourage them to get the shot now and to use the mask they can in indoor settings, esp where ventilation and air filtration are poor. This applies, as we all know, disproportionately to PoC who make up the bulk of the USA’s frontline workers, which makes it even more important to get the word out and sign up as many as possible for a booster shot. As we wrote in the previous diaries, the campaign to increase vaccination uptake among African-Americans, Latinos, native Americans, Alaskan and Hawaiian natives, Middle Eastern and North African Americans, Pacific Islanders and other PoC groups has been one of the great successes of US public health in the last century, and it’s one of the things our country should be justifiably proud about, even with all the awful things of the past two years. It’s a big reason why PoC groups and Blue Counties and districts in general were spared the worst of the delta and omicron waves in 2021 and 2022, and why COVID more-and-more is a disease of Republican-supporting, majority conservative Red Counties and districts opposed to vaccines and masking. But we can’t rest up on our laurels, again the immunity from original vaccines from 2021 has largely subsided and the newer variants are more evasive. So boosters and masks indoors are even more important as the latest wave begins its surge across all 50 states, particularly for PoC who are more exposed in their front-line jobs. It’s frustration to have to get boosted and put the masks back on every 6 months or so, but this is just the battle our generation has to fight, and hopefully as better vaccines and protections come on-line, we’ll get better and better at keeping each wave at bay. As far as outreach, again use any method you can find to get the word out—talk to leaders and post up flyers in community centers and schools, let people know on social media, email friends and family and inform them by word of mouth, make presentations at city council meetings, drop a friendly reminder at barbeques or social events, any way you can. We’ve helped to boost the booster and mask rate in PoC communities, but it’s all the more important to get the word out to the rest as the new wave surges up all over the country. Thanks to all of you for your help.