As we enter the next stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to change how we think about who is vulnerable and how we behave
The U.S. is taking a crash course in learning to "live with the virus." Policymakers and health experts agree that we have migrated to a less-disruptive COVID-19 endemic phase. This has produced extensive commentary on what living with the virus, and achieving the "new normal" might look like—liberating some while confusing others. Many people have spent two years avoiding and fearing the virus and are now being advised that it's safe to unmask and to resume a normal social life. For them, this has not ushered in a comfortable sense of natural transition, but instead has caused a national emotional whiplash. Psychologists call this avoidance conflict. CDC's new look-up map tool for COVID-19 community risk-level attempts to balance key goals of preventing hospital overload and flattening the curve of serious disease. The agency's previous map based on level of transmission reflected most counties as high-intensity bright red. The new map is mostly a reassuring low-risk green. Critics of this new approach say that the agency "seems to have moved the goalposts to justify the political imperative to let people get back to their normal lives." What both the critics and supporters of the CDC's new tool have missed is that—whether red or green—the tool doesn't change our prior fundamental relationship to the virus which we have had since the beginning of the pandemic. We are all still advised to warily avoid it until it becomes "safe enough." This old paradigm will not lead us to a "new normal". With the new CDC guidance our old paradigm dilemmas remain endless. When do I mask? Do I send my child to school with the sniffles? Can I return to work after cancer chemotherapy? Do I need a fourth shot? When do I use at home rapid tests? Should our family fly to our usual summer vacation spot? In this era of cautious fraught optimism, few have grasped the stark reality that for the country to successfully navigate to a sustainable endemic phase, most of us must transition…