Two years after officials began ringing the alarm on COVID-19, health officials in the public and private sector are lauding the progress made to overcome the crisis while recognizing the importance of remaining vigilant and prepared.
“As we commence March, having passed the two-year mark of adapting to what the pandemic has required, I remain grateful for the stamina, resilience and learning that continue to be demonstrated across San Mateo County with all of your help,” Chief of Health Louise Rogers said in a Message from the Chief published Thursday, March 3.
Officials have shifted their approach to the pandemic in recent weeks, opting to take a more advisory role as a surge caused by the omicron variant subsided. The shift is a far cry from the response two years ago which saw San Mateo County joining a handful of other Bay Area jurisdictions in instituting a lockdown that prohibited nonessential outings.
Since then, a number of policies have been implemented and lifted across the region including limitations on how far a person should travel from their home, prohibitions on visiting playgrounds, restrictions around visiting elder loved ones in congregate care settings and most recently, indoor masking requirements.
Speaking during a press conference Wednesday held in honor of the two-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic, Dr. Steven Parodi with Kaiser Permanente credited much of that progress to the uptake in vaccinations and the hard work of trusted messengers and health care workers.
“There have been true triumphs and there are heroes in the struggle that we’ve all been through and I cannot say enough about our health care workforce,” Parodi said. “During this crisis, they risked their lives literally for our communities and for me they are a true inspiration.”
In this new phase, Parodi said medical professionals will spend 2022 catching back up on surgeries delayed during the pandemic. He also argued for the private and public sectors to maintain their strong relationships built over the past two years to better address other preventable illnesses like heart disease and to highlight preventive measures like cancer screenings.
The virus is far from gone, he said. Rogers noted during a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday that the county is still seeing about 80 new COVID cases per day. That figure only includes results from PCR tests administered by health agencies and misses home tests or asymptomatic infections meaning a greater number of cases are likely adding to the more than 119,400 cases the county has experienced thus far.
Still, health experts expect that the virus is entering an endemic phase, Parodi said, noting that means it will likely remain prevalent well into the future with potential surges occurring like the common flu does seasonally.
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“We need to continue the vigilance and understand that we may see additional surges,” Parodi said. “We have to be in this together. We have to remain on guard for the next variant, as we should, but we have the means to protect ourselves and to protect each other.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has categorized the county and the broader Bay Area region as having a “low risk” of spreading the virus based on an updated framework released late February, Rogers wrote.
Guidance for residents living under that category is to get tested if exposed and to have plans in place for rapid testing especially for those who are at high risk and to follow CDC recommendations for isolating and quarantining. The guidance also encourages the public to stay up to date with vaccinations and boosters, a recommendation the county has reiterated over the past year and Parodi also emphasized repeatedly during the press conference.
Nearly 90% of all county residents have received at least one vaccine dose and more than 400,000 have been boosted, according to county data. A vaccine clinic at the San Mateo County Event Center will be closing next week but targeted community clinics remain in place to help increase vaccination rates among communities of color and officials will be creating access for pediatric doses at various sites, Rogers wrote.
After witnessing how successful the vaccines were at preventing serious illness during the omicron surge, Parodi said communities need to “keep up the drumbeat” around the importance of completing vaccination series and getting boosted when advised.
In the meantime, Parodi said experts are continuing to learn more about the efficacy of vaccines against the new variants and the long-term effects of COVID-19 on those who contract the virus.
“Now we have agency at this point. We have at our disposal the means to determine what an endemic state with COVID-19 looks like,” Parodi said. “We know we can’t eradicate the virus but we have the opportunity to determine whether we’re going to live with high levels or lower levels of COVID-19.”
I'm sorry to interrupt your self-congratulations, but it is about time you faced the facts: The public health response to this declared pandemic deserves no adulation until you can, by citing evidence, justify the measures taken (so we don't repeat the same mistakes).
It's quite simple actually. There are two formulae to be solved:
Formula #1: (Whatever you did*) >> (Resulted in X deaths)
Whatever you did limited the deaths to X.
Or, the path NOT taken...
Formula #2: (Doing nothing or very little**) >> (Resulted in X deaths) + (An imaginary number of additional deaths)
If we had not tossed out everything we knew about dealing with viruses and adopted an approach similar to Sweden, how many more deaths would have occurred?
* Under this heading we include the lock-downs, the massive economic damage, the ballooning debt, the disparagement of early/alternate treatments, the coercion of those who would not willingly submit to the injection, the lost/damaged lives as a result of “vaccine” side-effects, the destruction of businesses and livelihoods, the inappropriate vilification of the un-vaccinated, the man hours and materials required to push needles into arms, the damage to children's development and education, etc.
All for a virus which actually affected very few. Targeted protection was the correct response versus the course taken. That much is obvious. In summary, we paid an eye-watering cost to yield the results we see today.
** It was clear early on and even more so as the declared pandemic stretched onward that this was a problem for the aged and for those with pre-existing conditions. How do we know for certain that an individual “vaccinated” person experienced reduced symptoms? How do we know how many lives were saved by pushing needles into every available arm? We don't...because those experiments were not run. The benefits of the forced consensus which declared “vaccination” using experimental gene therapy are ASSUMED. Most importantly: The lack of knowledge regarding long-term, dangerous consequences of using this new technology places a dark cloud over its roll-out/use.
It is time to come clean.
P.S. It is clear from the last sentence in the article that the pro “vaccine” pushers have no intention of dropping their requirements...as they believe they can control the quantity of virus in a population (again, discounting natural immunity).
Wow, Mr. McVicker! Just wow! Great comment. I may borrow some of your material in other discussions, but I'll be sure to give you credit. Sadly, many jabbed folks don't realize they're guinea pigs for the jab juice providers. For those that were aware and chose to be jabbed, their body, their choice, but for kids that were jabbed, they didn't have a choice. Now if kids (who hopefully lead long lives) contract a non-hereditary ailment, is it because of the jab? Like most psychiatrists imply, it’s Mom’s fault. Okay, to be fair, it could be Dad’s fault. Florida is now recommending that healthy kids should not be jabbed.
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(2) comments
The Victory Lap Is Premature
I'm sorry to interrupt your self-congratulations, but it is about time you faced the facts: The public health response to this declared pandemic deserves no adulation until you can, by citing evidence, justify the measures taken (so we don't repeat the same mistakes).
It's quite simple actually. There are two formulae to be solved:
Formula #1: (Whatever you did*) >> (Resulted in X deaths)
Whatever you did limited the deaths to X.
Or, the path NOT taken...
Formula #2: (Doing nothing or very little**) >> (Resulted in X deaths) + (An imaginary number of additional deaths)
If we had not tossed out everything we knew about dealing with viruses and adopted an approach similar to Sweden, how many more deaths would have occurred?
* Under this heading we include the lock-downs, the massive economic damage, the ballooning debt, the disparagement of early/alternate treatments, the coercion of those who would not willingly submit to the injection, the lost/damaged lives as a result of “vaccine” side-effects, the destruction of businesses and livelihoods, the inappropriate vilification of the un-vaccinated, the man hours and materials required to push needles into arms, the damage to children's development and education, etc.
All for a virus which actually affected very few. Targeted protection was the correct response versus the course taken. That much is obvious. In summary, we paid an eye-watering cost to yield the results we see today.
** It was clear early on and even more so as the declared pandemic stretched onward that this was a problem for the aged and for those with pre-existing conditions. How do we know for certain that an individual “vaccinated” person experienced reduced symptoms? How do we know how many lives were saved by pushing needles into every available arm? We don't...because those experiments were not run. The benefits of the forced consensus which declared “vaccination” using experimental gene therapy are ASSUMED. Most importantly: The lack of knowledge regarding long-term, dangerous consequences of using this new technology places a dark cloud over its roll-out/use.
It is time to come clean.
P.S. It is clear from the last sentence in the article that the pro “vaccine” pushers have no intention of dropping their requirements...as they believe they can control the quantity of virus in a population (again, discounting natural immunity).
Wow, Mr. McVicker! Just wow! Great comment. I may borrow some of your material in other discussions, but I'll be sure to give you credit. Sadly, many jabbed folks don't realize they're guinea pigs for the jab juice providers. For those that were aware and chose to be jabbed, their body, their choice, but for kids that were jabbed, they didn't have a choice. Now if kids (who hopefully lead long lives) contract a non-hereditary ailment, is it because of the jab? Like most psychiatrists imply, it’s Mom’s fault. Okay, to be fair, it could be Dad’s fault. Florida is now recommending that healthy kids should not be jabbed.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.