This month marks the second anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for many, it’s seemed like an eternity. While the pandemic isn’t over, it is entering a new phase.
On Mar. 12, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The University of Georgia, the Clarke County School District and many local businesses shuttered as the community and the world prepared to shelter in place for a matter of weeks. Weeks turned into months, months turned into years. The Delta variant hit last fall, then Omicron right on its heels. Hospitals filled to the brim and deaths mounted—more than 200 in Athens, 30,000 in Georgia, nearly a million in the U.S. and 6 million worldwide.
Now, the numbers are improving, and COVID cases in Athens are down to about three a day after topping 200 per day in January. The CDC recently changed masking guidelines again to suggest it’s safe for most people to go unmasked indoors, pivoting away from case numbers and toward hospital caseloads as the preferred metric. Athens-Clarke County is no longer enforcing its mask mandate, and the Clarke County School District recently made masks optional.
“We’re not out of this,” said Jayne Morgan, a cardiologist and head of the COVID team for the Piedmont chain of hospitals, which owns Athens Regional. “I know people want to think we’re out of it, but we’re not out of it.”
Missed Opportunities
There were several points when COVID could have been defeated, Morgan said. “Unfortunately, we as a society were unwilling to follow public health guidelines so this virus could be eradicated. Now we’ll have to live with it,” she said.
“I don’t think we lasted two weeks” under shelter-in-place orders, she said. “People started shouting about freedom.” Then, disinformation and political ideology prompted resistance to mask-wearing and getting vaccinated. “We should’ve been able to get our entire population vaccinated within four to five months,” Morgan said. Instead, only 65% of people nationwide and 52% in Athens are fully vaccinated.
Compare that to the response to the last great pandemic, the Spanish flu 100 years ago.
According to UGA history professor Stephen Berry, many of the advances in human health in the last century are the direct result of public health advances and planning. “War may be more storied and studied, but for thousands of years diseases and infections proved the gravest challenge to human life,” said Berry, referencing his new book. “For millennia gangrene, sepsis, smallpox, influenza, cholera, yellow fever, tuberculosis, pellagra and malaria were the great global killers. As late as 1915, only 3% of Americans made it to the biblical age of ‘three score and ten.’ And then, relatively yesterday, relatively overnight, we doubled the length of our lives.”
Brian Drake, a UGA historian who recently wrote about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic in Athens, said historical documents from that time showed that the community response to that pandemic was, in many ways, much like the initial response that we saw in Athens at the onset of the pandemic. The community banded together and willingly followed measures issued by the Athens Board of Health, which had been given broad authority by city ordinances to take action against any possible epidemic.
“They were empowered by the city ordinances to do all kinds of things, and they exercised that power,” said Drake. They ordered the shutdown of schools. They ordered the closing of businesses. There were no church services for a while in the fall of 1918. They wouldn’t even let the student body from the state agricultural school, which is where the Health [Sciences] Campus is now and used to be a Navy school, come into town.”
Pool halls were closed, and the city kept a regularly visiting circus from coming to town, he said. The Red Cross even had a mask making campaign in town. At the end of World War I, the cultural mentality of acting in the interest of the greater good was in full force, but also, the pandemic was limited to three waves, with only the latter two waves impacting Athens, and unlike today’s pandemic, the exhaustion of prolonged pandemic was likely not a factor.
“When government trust was at its highest between 1950 and 1980, we eradicated malaria in the South,” Berry said. “We put niacin in our bread so we would stop dying of pellagra. We put fluoride in the water so we’d actually have teeth beyond the age of 40. We developed nationwide vaccination requirements for measles, mumps and rubella. And in one of the greatest achievements in human history, we slayed the dragon, eradicating smallpox, the greatest global killer of all humankind, then killing two million humans a year. For a short time, we did big things and could claim that, at least occasionally, that the nine most magical words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”
The Path Forward
Year Three of the Pandemic is likely to be better than the past two years, though, Morgan said. Reasons for optimism include clinical trials for new therapies and soon-to-be approval for vaccinating young children. But people still need multiple levels of protection, she said, from getting vaccinated to hand-washing to mask-wearing and social distancing. Like slices of Swiss cheese, one layer will have holes, but not multiple slices stacked on top of each other.
“I hope people will continue to take precautions, even though these mask mandates have been lifted, because we absolutely will see new variants.”
Although cases have fallen dramatically, one thing that concerns Morgan is that cases seem to be plateauing among older children and teenagers, the majority of whom are not vaccinated. That could be a sign of a new surge to come, she said. Plus, the vaccine has not yet reached many parts of the world, which could allow new variants to arise in other places and migrate to the U.S.
If and when a new variant does arise, it seems unlikely that public health officials will have the same prevention tools at their disposal as the focus shifts to testing and treatment.
The Biden administration’s new National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan aims to protect against and treat COVID-19, prepare for new variants, avoid shutdowns and fight the virus abroad. The central part of the new plan, coined the “test and treat” component, aims to get people tested for the virus and immediately offer viral treatment to them, all done at pharmacies. While many have praised the comprehensive approach of the plan, the “test to treat” component was initially met with some concern by many in the medical community, namely the American Medical Association. The AMA has since said they are reassured by the measures taken in the plan to ensure the safety of patients, particularly those with complex medical issues. Some experts contend that having testing at pharmacies, as opposed to at-home testing, could be a potential source for viral spread for those most often at risk.
Georgia, like many other Southern states, is pursuing legislation that would limit the power of local governments to control the pandemic through public health measures, such as masking, social distancing or vaccine mandates or passports. Senate Bill 345, proposed by Georgia Republicans and approved along party lines by the Georgia Senate last week, would ban the use of vaccine passports for public services or entry to government buildings. Initially, the bill took aim at mandating all vaccines, but the language was changed in the version that has passed. Another bill up for approval would allow parents to opt out of any school mask mandates at the local level.
While the Georgia legislature backed down from banning all vaccine mandates, SB 345 still limits the ability of local governments or school boards to require the COVID-19 vaccine if it is approved beyond emergency authorization and is officially approved for regular use. A Flagpole open records request to the Clarke County School District showed just how effective mandating vaccines–for things such as whooping cough–have been at keeping disease at bay. Except for a handful who received religious or medical exemptions, 100% of children in CCSD schools have received the required pediatric vaccinations. (COVID vaccines are currently under emergency authorization for children 5–17 and not available for those under 5, but Morgan said she expects that to change soon.)
“While we have not used vaccine passports in our buildings, and of course do not operate the schools, localities should have all tools at their disposal in protecting public health,” ACC Mayor Kelly Girtz said. “I’m grateful to be in a better environment right now vis a vis COVID-19, and hope that it will hold. However, we have seen rises and falls in case rates and hospitalization levels several times over the last two years, and we all need to be prepared if the dynamics should shift again.”
Thus far, the pattern has been for cases to spike in August, when UGA students return to town, and during the winter holidays. Morgan said she doesn’t know if that pattern will hold, or if booster shots might become an annual ritual like flu shots. But if cases do spike again, she said, hospitals are now better prepared.
“We’re absolutely in a better position, if for no other reason than practice makes perfect,” Morgan said. But even when few COVID patients are seeking hospital treatment, doctors and nurses are still dealing with the fallout—blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, delayed care, mental health issues. “Each surge requires a little more, because you’re tired,” she said.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
