We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet: COVID-19 and You

Jessica Vieira | Opinion Editor

It’s so easy to just ignore COVID-19 as a coping mechanism, or through ignorance, especially because mainstream news outlets are covering infection rates and deaths less and less. In fact, the only places I, as a college student that only ever watches the news occasionally, hear about COVID anymore is through TikTok, and if a bunch of strangers on the internet can distribute information on a global pandemic more efficiently than news outlets almost three years in, it's time to rethink our priorities as a society.

There are many important things going on currently that are headline-worthy, but I still think it’s necessary for COVID to be talked about. This is a mass-disabling virus that is dangerous and unpredictable, and there are around 40,000 cases being reported per day in October of 2022.When classes started up again on college campuses, cases jumped by 37%, and now cases are projected to rise even more during the winter months.

Not only can COVID severely damage able-bodied peoples lungs, heart, and brain, but also it can be debilitating and deadly for people with a compromised immune system. This could be anyone from people with chronic illnesses to the elderly. It is absolutely horrible that as a society we don’t have enough basic human empathy to even care. It’s not every man for himself, it’s those that can protect themselves and others have a responsibility to protect themselves and others.

It’s one thing to not wear masks within a relatively closed bubble of people, and another completely to have taken the mask off altogether everywhere you go. Not to mention, the fact that people have just given up on getting vaccine boosters because they feel protected enough after either having had COVID once or twice already, or because they ‘don’t get sick’ (the number of times I’ve heard that one...), or because they already have gotten the vaccine when it first became available. It is your job as a functioning member of society to do your part to make sure that your peers don’t contract a virus that has been plaguing us for three years.

What you can do, is get your vaccines, wear your mask in crowded places, and acknowledge that COVID didn’t go away because people stopped talking about it. I know it’s tiring to hear about, and I know that everyone is fatigued and doesn’t want to think about this anymore, but it is very important to talk about, and doing your part can save lives.