Again, I really am having trouble understanding why this is going on right now.
NEW ORLEANS — The city of New Orleans will move to a Modified Phase-3 COVID order starting this Friday, March 12. The order in Orleans will mirror the state's Phase-3 measures in many ways, but differ in some key ways.
The State of Louisiana will allow full capacity at houses of worship, while Orleans will continue to limit capacity, now it will be 75 percent of capacity with social distancing and mask guidelines required.
We just need another couple months to get the vax numbers up to something more comfortable. People should be able to handle that kind of an ask by now. Opening everything now is specifically the thing these public health experts warned everybody not to do just one week ago.
But the next few months in the pandemic are critical. Concern is growing over moves by some states to lift restrictions already, while new variants of the virus are on the rise in the U.S. Experts warn that actions taken now risk delaying getting back to some semblance of normal.
Health officials are urging restrictions to remain in place for the final stretch, saying that it will not be much longer before the situation markedly improves, and it does not make sense to lift all restrictions when widespread vaccinations are in sight.
The President of the United States has characterized the rush to lift restrictions during this final stretch as "neanderthal mentality." Most experts agree that we can expect to reach herd immunity from COVID when somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of the population has been vaccinated. The CDC expects that to happen in about three months if we don't do anything stupid right now such as drop the emergency restrictions.
Thomas Tsai, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that by summer, “I think we can have a much more, I don’t want to say normal, but at least a 'new normal' summer."
But experts warn that the return to normal could actually be delayed if restrictions are lifted too soon, causing a new spike in cases in the near term.
Tsai likened the current situation to the seventh inning stretch of a baseball game. “Progress has been made; it’s OK to take stock of that,” he said. “How we play the next two innings determines if this is a single game or turns into a doubleheader.”
Sports analogies like that one are flying around this discourse right now. We've heard it's the 7th inning, or the third quarter, or "maybe the end of halftime at a football game." But really the thing we would like to avoid right now is this.
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According to this poll, a plurality of voters (34%) would prefer that restrictions remain in place until we reach 75 percent vaccinated and a majority (55%) would like to wait at least until we get 50 percent done. As of yesterday, CDC reports that just under 10 percent of the US population was currently vaccinated. According to the Louisiana Department of Health, that number for Orleans Parish is 12.33%.
So what are our local leaders doing with that information? Well, first of all they are lying about it in their campaign emails. But also they are throwing open the doors for all sorts of things that we really don't actually need to do right now.. especially with a new round of stimulus on the way. Some days we really have to wonder if they are even want to end this thing. In today's Advocate, Will Sutton writes that he wants to get back to hugging people again... but maybe not just yet.
Yes, it’s true that the crackdowns have hurt us economically. And it’s true that far too many have lost jobs and income, adjusted, gross or otherwise. But I’m still seeing too many people not cooperating, and I’m not comfortable with guessing who out there has been vaccinated and who hasn’t. I know I’ll feel safer with more people fully vaccinated.
Let's take the guesswork anxiety out of this thing. It only takes a few more months.
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