Normalcy bias is killing thousands of Americans. People assume that if restaurants and stores are open it’s safe. That if airports and other forms of mass transit were unsafe, they would be closed. People are operating based on how things SHOULD BE, and we have no hospital beds.

This is what kept people from grasping the severity of Trump’s crimes during the impeachment hearings. This notion of “if what he did was really that bad, they’d remove him.” Now it’s “if things were really that bad, we’d be on lockdown.” Except people are dying by the thousands

Of course people expect things to make sense and that their objective reality will accurately reflect the severity of the danger being posed to them. But that isn’t happening, and it’s only going to get worse as people mistake the vaccine for a cure and declare “COVID IS OVER!”

Even the most effective vaccines take weeks to work & only protect you from certain strains of a virus. Not everyone is going to get the vaccine, we have no ways of knowing how long vaccinating people will take, and we will not be able to identify who has been vaccinated.

I’m not saying this to scare you. Nor to claim that the vaccine developments aren’t great news. I’m saying it so that you don’t fall victim to a premature sense that this is all over, stop wearing your masks indoors, etc. Things are going to stay bad & even get worse for A WHILE

Despite CDC warnings telling people travel was unsafe, over 6 million people booked flights for the holidays. Countless more took road trips for family gatherings despite a once in a century pandemic. The fallout from this in the coming weeks/months will be CATASTROPHIC.

Despite being told that a negative COVID test did not make traveling safe, people took the risk. Seeing their family for the holidays or attending their niece’s christening or their old college buddies’ wedding took precedence over their own lives & the lives of countless others

And this is because of their overriding misconception that “there’s no way I’d be allowed to do this if it wasn’t safe.” They shouldn’t have been allowed. It wasn’t safe. And we are continuing to pay the price for these in the form of over 333,000 deaths, nearly all preventable.

I’ve met people who have contracted the virus, seen (and believe) the death toll, and still shrug it off as “people die.” That is sociopath territory (complete disregard for others). But for those of you who do care, KEEP TAKING PRECAUTIONS TO KEEP YOURSELF & LOVED ONES SAFE

I know you’re exhausted. I know you would give anything to hug your parents/grandparents, to take a long overdue family trip; to be able to go to a movie or sports game. We all long for these things. But right now, we need to be buckling down on precautions, not loosening them.

Do you know why the pandemic is more or less a thing of the past in places like Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand? Because they took it seriously from the beginning and made the hard choices fast. They also didn’t politicize basic safety precautions & provided gov’t assistance.

If we all wore masks for 3 weeks & didn’t gather in large groups indoors for 2-6 weeks, the virus would be under control. Since that’s not going to happen, my plea to you is to keep taking measures to protect yourself and your loved ones in the coming months, as tired as you are.

My plea has nothing to do with politics. It stems from a genuine desire for you to survive this crisis no matter who you voted for. COVID doesn’t care about your politics. It just likes warm human bodies with lung cells it can take over and destroy until the person can’t breathe.

Help is coming for sure. We have an incoming administration that is staffed with experts and use science to guide decisions. We have multiple companies that have produced extremely promising vaccines. In the meantime, it’s up to us not to let up on the things we are doing.

When people tell me they’re going to stop wearing their masks and hit the club the second they get vaccinated, it physically pains me how much they fail to grasp the situation. Viruses mutate. Not everyone gets vaccinated. I’m sorry but please buckle in for a long, painful winter

There are already at least 6 strains of COVID. You can catch any of the other 5 after vaccination. Also, recovering from this virus does not mean you can no longer transmit it or catch a different strain of it. Does this suck? Yes. Are we exhausted? Yes. Should we give up? NO

Let’s let this be a story we can tell our grandkids about one day because we survived it by being smart and staying vigilant. Let’s survive this so we can learn from it and the next time a pandemic hits we are able to save thousands of lives right from the beginning.

Let’s use this as an opportunity to teach people about how science doesn’t care about politics. About how critical is it for states to have consistent messaging and strategies in place to control the spread of viruses like this on the future. About how everyone has a part to play

And we need to talk about the collective toll of grief and depression that the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives is going to have on the surviving population. This is the part almost no one has mentioned because the amount of loss is simply too much for us to comprehend.

COVID is probably among the worst things I’ve seen in terms of its impact on the mental health of those who lose a loved one to it. I’ll get into this in more detail in another thread, but it basically combines all the elements that maximize the painfulness and trauma of a loss.

COVID took peoples loved ones in hospital rooms alone; their deaths were sudden and untimely (many had no prior health problems); they had no chance to say goodbye; the deaths were largely preventable; they suffered in their final hours hooked up to ventilators and machines.

I am currently working with one of the nation’s top grief experts on a website that assembles resources to help those who’ve lost a loved one to this virus through the grieving process. It is a project that I am hopeful will be instrumental in assisting millions of people.

In the meantime, let’s keep doing our part to minimize the death toll. Let’s keep wearing our masks. Let’s get vaccinated at our earliest opportunity and not misconstrue this as immunity from the virus. Let’s keep washing our hands and social distancing. We will get through this

Here’s what we can do:
—Keep wearing our masks inside all public spaces
—Get vaccinated as soon as we can
—Educate people about how vaccines are not cures
—Keep social distancing/washing our hands
—Be mindful of the collective toll this has taken on us & show kindness to others

And lastly, if you live in GA or know anyone who does, please reach out to them about how critical the runoff elections are on Jan 5th. This will be the difference of whether we get real relief and real things done for Americans or not.
#VoteOssoffWarnock