Column: ‘Everybody’s getting COVID.’ That doesn’t mean you should try to get it, too
2 years, 11 months ago

Column: ‘Everybody’s getting COVID.’ That doesn’t mean you should try to get it, too

LA Times  

The latest statistics are terrifying. “I don’t believe we’ve seen the peak,” Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the “Today” show on Friday, adding that “hospitals right now are full of people who are unvaccinated.” And yet, in Dr. Roberto Vargas’ corner of California in South L.A., where he’s been helping lead an effort to persuade hesitant Black and Latino residents to get vaccinated, what he hears isn’t terror over Omicron, but resignation. “It’s a hard message to give because the current observation is, well, everybody’s getting COVID, and people are looking around and seeing a lot of people get COVID and not die.” Indeed, as of this week, county hospitals were treating only a fraction of the coronavirus-positive patients they were treating at this time last year, when the deadly Delta variant was circulating more widely than it is today. In fact, this gets at Vargas’ main argument to young people in many neighborhoods of South L.A. who look at surging cases of Omicron and think, “Why don’t I just get it?” Most, he knows, aren’t like my uncle with his private insurance and access to state-of-the-art hospitals. “Because if they do get sick, they’re very likely to die because they’re not going to get to a good health center.” California Some Angelenos say it’s time to learn to live with COVID As the Omicron variant infects record numbers of people, many in Southern California say they are no longer willing to hide from a virus that has already killed 800,000 Americans.

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