It’s Time to Say Goodbye to Covid

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By DARIA POZHOGA

Midwood welcomed back students in September for the beginning of what seems to be the most normal school experience we've had over the past two years. No more annoying Covid health screenings or awkward seating in the lunchroom. Mask mandates have also been lifted throughout the country, and everything is starting to feel normal – for the most part. 

Many students and teachers continue to make the choice of wearing a mask, worried that Covid could still be wandering the halls. Similarly, you can still spot people wearing a mask in places throughout the city such as public transport. 

This brings up the question: When will we finally move on from Covid? Hasn’t it been long enough? After a look at the data, I think that the answer is yes. After nearly three years, it’s time we move on from a past that doesn't affect us as much anymore. 

“Americans can remove their masks, return to work, stay in the classroom, and move forward safely,” President Joe Biden said in the spring. According to NYC Health, as of November 6, there was a daily average of only nine Covid deaths per day in a city of nearly 9 million. Do all our old precautions make sense if the virus isn’t nearly as dangerous as it used to be?

Some may argue that certain precautions should stay in place during case spikes, which is somewhat reasonable. But mostly, from now on, Covid should be looked at a lot like the flu.

As we know, before the flu season, flu shots are given in order to decrease the likelihood of contracting the virus. Following the same logic, the Covid vaccine should continue to be offered to strengthen immunity. Studies of the vaccine have shown an approximate 80% protection against severe illness and death. With such an approach, we can continue living our everyday lives without unnecessary precautions such as masks, quarantine, or online learning. 

Covid is never going to completely go away, and we need to accept that. “The virus is going to continue to be around, and it will be infecting lots of us,” said William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard. But, he went on to say, “we don’t expect the consequences of those infections to be anything like as bad as what we have seen the last few years.”

Our main concern should be deaths, not cases, and we can see that people have now become more immune to the virus. If other spikes do follow, deaths will still be lower compared to previous years, therefore a lockdown should not be necessary. Besides, who wants to be in complete isolation again?

Another precaution previously used, masks, has not been proven to be effective in the real world. According to the Bloomberg article “U.K. Study Fails to Prove Masks Work in Schools” by Irina Anghel, “schools with face-covering rules in October 2021 saw their absence rate drop by 2.3 percentage points, to 3%, two to three weeks later. In schools that didn’t use masks, absences fell by 1.7 percentage points, to 3.6%.” In other words, there was almost no difference — less than 1% — in students falling ill between the masking and non-masking schools.

In all, immunity amongst us has risen, making Covid much less of a concern compared to past years. The idea of transitioning back to previous precautions should be let go of, as they showed little to no effectiveness and also caused a lot of harm. Let’s make it official and say there’s no need to worry about going back to Zoom; class is back in session, just how it used to be.