Thread by @SethAbramson

Thank god almost no one in media is covering the undercount COVID-19 death toll, as we’re at 1.5 million Americans dead in 23 months and if that were widely known along with the fact that 3000 died just yesterday those “getting back to normal” thinkpieces would be harder to write

Also out of bounds would be those fabulous “grandma would have died pretty soon anyway” takes that make Twitter such a great place to be in the midst of thousands of Americans dying daily from a deadly virus

Apparently we’re not supposed to care about the elderly dying, or folks with comorbidities, or unvaccinated people, but unfortunately I do because of how I was raised

Also—fun fact—somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 4 of those dying daily are vaccinated and “did everything right”

*Four surges* in a row now, we have belatedly bemoaned the fact that we “relaxed our guard too early” as if we are terminally incapable of learning this lesson

If the whole nation really took this thing *insanely* seriously for 30 days—which no, we haven’t ever done—it could end

So everyone in my feed and everywhere else on Twitter giving 1,000 reasons why *they specifically* shouldn’t have to take the pandemic hyper-seriously for 30 days right now creates the facepalm we all experience every 90 days with a new surge and new “we relaxed too early” mantra

If 1.5 million of your fellow Americans die in 23 months from a killer virus and your only reaction is to check the actuarial tables to see if the right or wrong people are dying and check your own level of risk you’ve already missed the point of the phrase “national emergency”

But my *biggest* concern is this: we’re told vaccinated Americans have done all we can and therefore deserve to go clubbing and whatnot, but in fact booster adoption *significantly* lags first-two-shots vaccination, which means overall we are getting *less* properly vaccinated

Those who tout vaccination rates as justifying a return to normality never talk about booster adoption rates, though the science says boosters are now necessary to fight Omicron and though we’ll shortly see Americans eligible for a second booster that even *fewer* people will get

So while during *this* surge it’s been mathematically sound to say that most of those dying—except for 16% to 25%—have been unvaccinated, with each new surge (caused by us prematurely relaxing) a higher and higher percentage of the dead will be those with two shots but no booster