Don’t forget about COVID: New Yorkers must keep fighting the virus with simple steps

As COVID hospitalizations again climb in New York, the good news is that, unlike in centuries past, a clever virus isn’t facing a defenseless population. With modern biotechnology and medicine, the fight is far from unilateral, and we have both the information and the tools to combat the spread effectively.

We’re in a far different position even from where we were three years ago, as uncertainty reigned and we found ourselves at a loss about how this pathogen spread and what exactly we could or should do about it (remember when we were wiping down groceries after bringing them home).

Now, we know that vaccination dramatically decreases the risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death, and we know that the first round of vaccination is not enough to get the totality of the benefits. Pharmaceutical scientists have worked to develop updated vaccines that are tailored to the omicron variant and its now-dominant subvariants, and the public should get used to thinking of these boosters as routine, much how one might idly get a flu shot while stopping into the pharmacy to pick something up.

Unfortunately, this concept hasn’t been internalized by the majority of the U.S. public, which has been lagging in receiving the latest bivalent boosters. New Yorkers had much to be proud of as our vaccination rates exceeded nationwide numbers, but now we’re lagging on receiving the new shots, with barely more than 15% of adults having been boosted as compared to nearly 18% of adults across the country.

It’s important for everyone to get these shots as soon as possible, but particularly for older adults; as time goes on, it becomes clearer that, with all else being equal, senior citizens remain at much higher risk than others, and even vaccinated older folks are dying at similar or even greater rates to younger and unvaccinated people. It also means taking precautions like masking in crowded public spaces; masks aren’t fun, but they are a minor inconvenience that can nip this spike in the bud.