The emergence of COVID-19 as just one more front in America’s culture wars has come with a death toll. However one feels about whether schools were shut down for too long, the fact is the disease was and is a killer — especially of older people and those who have pre-existing health conditions and/or are overweight. Of the roughly 6,400 people who have died from COVID in San Diego County since 2020, more than 85 percent were in their 60s or older. The same group is also far more likely to suffer from the debilitating effects of “long COVID.” Two new studies by British researchers concluded that “long COVID” is very real and a major long-term threat to public health.
That’s why those who are most at risk must keep their guard up and seek to receive the updated COVID booster vaccine that should be widely available within weeks. For many San Diegans, the pandemic feels like a nightmare that they’ve finally moved past. But the threat remains daunting and must not be obscured by those who say that some of the dubious ways authorities responded to the pandemic somehow make the whole thing a hoax. Some 1.2 million dead Americans and their families don’t agree.
