This is our periodic reminder post on the urgency of spreading the word and encouraging higher COVID booster uptake and good mask usage (esp. N95’s and KN95’s) among PoC communities throughout the US, who unfortunately have been lagging in booster administration after our dramatic success in increasing PoC vaccination levels in 2021, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the delta and first omicron waves. We’ve brought this up before but it’s even more urgent now because, as feared, not only are cases surging again throughout the country (with numbers underestimating due to all the home testing), but also case positivity, wastewater levels and now COVID hospitalizations are also now spiking up yet again — 70% increase over just 3 weeks ago (and 20% up over just the past week!). The wishful thinking about a supposedly mild variant or protection from BA.1 has once again proved to be deadly misleading: boosters and masks are critical, above all for reducing viral dosages and thus the likelihood of sickness when one is exposed to these very contagious variants. (Remember the damage from COVID-19 isn’t just in the deaths, but in the growing toll of long COVID and infectious damage of the heart, lungs, brain, immune system, kidney and liver in millions of Americans, plus blood clots and elevated diabetes even with mild cases—this is one nasty virus.) We’re also posting to dispel some confusion and misinformation about the supposed danger of the vaccines in clots and myocarditis—short version is the data are showing you’re still far better off getting the booster than getting COVID, with an active infection dumping much higher levels of spike protein in the blood and a lot more organ damage.
We’ll say it again since it’s such a proud and delightful success story, one of the best public health successes in the US in a century. As many of you may recall, in early 2021, vaccination among African-Americans, Latinos, Middle Eastern/North African Americans (MENA), Pacific Islanders, native Americans, Alaskan Aleuts and native Americans had been lagging far behind vaccine uptake levels of white Americans. But thanks to one of the most effective public health and public outreach campaigns in modern memory, that situation had changed dramatically by the summer of 2021, with Black Americans, Latinos and indigenous Americans especially having some of the highest vaccination and mask usage rates in the country—a critical factor in their protection against the delta and omicron waves later that year and early 2022. The turnaround was so astounding that as multiple news and report outlets have discussed, since spring 2021 COVID has largely become a disease of the Red counties (especially the most pro-Trump counties) which remain vitriolically anti-vax, anti-mask and anti-any kind of protective measure for COVID. This is important not only because of the immediate lethality of a bout with COVID, but also because of the much greater numbers of Americans who suffer some form of organ injury from even mild COVID cases, long COVID or just targeted tissue injury, as the medical reports are more-and-more documenting. (This is now well established, scientific data—again even mild COVID is causing possibly devastating heart injury and blood clots, higher diabetes risk, brain damage and other organs. In other words even among the survivors of COVID, the masks and vaccines make a huge difference by reducing viral dosage and the potential for such severe outcomes.
Unfortunately the virus causing COVID has proven to be a fast changing and wily enemy, it’s mutating faster than we expected even as the immunity from vaccines goes down after a few months, which is why it’s all the more important to get a booster. And here, unfortunately, the picture still looks a lot more like first part of 2021, with PoC communities lagging in uptake of booster shoots. This was important before but even more urgent now with the latest COVID wave now straight upon us—caused these “sublevel subvariants” like BA2, BA2.12 and now BA4 and others already in the country--and not only cases but hospitalizations rising fast, so this is not mild as the media once hoped, and previous BA1 exposure is doing little to protect against these new variants, just like happened to England. Now there has also been some news lately about clots that might be getting caused by the J and J vaccine, or heart inflammation (myocarditis) getting caused by the Moderna shot in teenagers and some young adults. We talked to the medical people in the group, and they said yeah there’s some truth here just because the vaccines are providing a sample of the spike protein, which does have some toxicity. But any infection from COVID is gonna hit you with a lot more of that viral spike, and be much more likely to cause damage. The boosters don’t totally prevent you from getting or spreading COVID, or getting sick, which is why it’s good to also wear a mask to reduce the dose. But they help a whole lot to reduce how sick you get, even against these newer omicron sublevel variants that may not be as well-matched—someone without a vaccine or booster is a whole lot more likely to have to go to the hospital. So still, any of the vaccines as a booster is better than getting hit by COVID right now spreading all over in your body. It sucks that we still have to keep fighting all these COVID waves, but this is a force straight from nature and it doesn’t care if we’re tired of it—like one of our nurses said, previous generations had it a lot worse with their epidemics and outbreaks (amidst wars and famines and all those things), so it gives some perspective about our own disease fight, as bad as it is. And there are a lot of efforts to make newer vaccines with better ability to target the virus, better treatments and filtration. Like one of great-grandmas used to say, sometimes these battles go over years and years, but again, the virus doesn’t care if we’re tired of it.
Again it is worth repeating, US COVID hospitalizations are up in almost all states as of this week, as are ICU admits and other indicators of severe disease, so it’s not just cases (which are also under-estimated due to home-testing). This is a serious, dangerous wave that’s sadly going to kill a lot more Americans across the United States, and it’s urgent that we increase booster uptake and encourage mask usage. As the docs and nurses in our group emphasize, N95 and KN95 masks are best, but even a regular surgical mask is better than not having one—like they say, with COVID it’s all a matter of reducing the dose of virus you get to reduce the threat it causes. Thus social distancing, and for anyone who can help encourage better ventilation and air-filtering, these are important too. Especially for PoC communities and individuals who are more likely to be working front-line retail and essential worker jobs. Thanks to all of you who’ve been helping to get the word out before, and now with the latest dangerous COVID wave spreading throughout the USA, it’s more urgent than ever to encourage boosters, masks and other protective measures, esp for the PoC communities who are our front-line workers keeping the country going.