The 'This Is Not What We Were Promised' Stage Of Covid

We can never let physical reality do the hard work of advocacy.

But sometimes, the physical reality helps push the advocacy along.

I’ve seen this up close on the climate crisis, with people being moved towards activism by personal experience with extreme weather.

As much as the experience with extreme weather, however, it’s the realization that what they experienced was not a one-off and it will keep happening to them which tends to spark people to action.

Are we entering this phase of covid?

Because this week a few things said by mainstream commentators suggest to me we might be moving in that direction.

You could say we’re entering the ‘huh, this is not what we were promised’ stage of the pandemic.

The dawning realization stage.

First it was the billionaire owner of the LA Times (and celebrated transplant surgeon, as well as cancer drug inventor) Pat Soon-Shiong who tweeted that ongoing covid infection “madness will continue” until we get new vaccines.

The context for this angry tweet is obviously the summer covid wave. In 2024. I don’t imagine Pat really expected this. (What he’s saying here is that vaccines can’t get in front of the virus because updates will always be based on fading strains).

Then the centrist commentator Matthew Yglesias, in response to a tweet that technology had beaten covid, said that tech didn’t beat covid, we actually lost. Yglesias has very few correct takes, but this is one of them. A stopped clock etc.

Again, I imagine it’s because he’s seeing people dropping with covid years after we were supposed to have beaten covid.

Some people jumped to the defence of the tech beat covid argument, saying vaccines have made the virus “an annoying endemic thing like the flu.”

Yes, covid, like influenza, is now here forever. But that’s where the similarities end. Covid exacts a much bigger health toll. People are infected far more frequently, it kills far more and leaves a far greater number with post-viral illnesses. In the US in 2024, around 7,000 people have died of the flu. More than 24,000 have died of covid. We don’t know how many have a new-onset post-covid condition from a 2024 infection. Because public health doesn’t track disease any more. But it will be in the tens of thousands.

Among the high-profile people who got covid again this week were Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff and Whoopi Goldberg. Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam, said his most recent bout of likely covid was “like a near-death experience.” All inconvenient reminders that we didn’t beat covid. That we’re never going back to the before covid times. (People who are invested in tech progress really struggle with this idea).

Then we saw the UK’s new public health and prevention minister Andrew Gwynne retweet a bunch of stuff about long covid rates in the UK. He also retweeted the speech Violet Affleck made to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors defending masks as a critical public health tool as some states look to move forward with bans. Affleck’s brave speech made news headlines.

Finally, in the UK, popular British radio host James O’Brien (who has over 1.2 million weekly listeners) corrected himself after referring to “during covid,” said there is a new covid wave and promised to cover covid and long covid more in the future on his show.

Covid is very much still on people’s minds, whether they admit it or not.

Mostly still not, but the cracks in the dam are showing.

Inevitably. Because physical (well, in covid’s case, biological) reality can only be denied for so long.

Even minimizing grifters have been talking about covid again because it is obviously still a thing.

A thing that is happening is happening. And you don’t even need a majority of people to accept reality.

You just need the right people to do so.

Because the right people can do things like install air filters in schools and hospitals. They can encourage masks. They can call out less than ideal vaccines and push for better ones. They can generate the background noise that popularizes the idea that covid is not over.

And when covid is surging and in the news again, we as individuals can harness this. A mention of the fact you wear a mask indoors here. Dropping the importance of ventilation and clean air there.

When people then get covid again, or see headlines about Violet Affleck and masks and long covid, or hear a popular radio or TV host talking about covid, they’ll remember ‘oh yeah, Nate was talking about this.’

Because when famous people start talking about the thing we’ve always been talking about, it makes us seem less obsessive. Less weird.

That fringe thing we’ve been going on about suddenly takes on more legitimacy.

It shouldn’t be this way.

But people are social creatures that take social cues from social influencers.

So keep building that background noise.

Keep being weird.