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Former President Barack Obama announced in a tweet on Sunday that he tested positive for Covid-19.
Fortunately, Obama is vaccinated. But his announcement should serve as a reminder to Americans that the pandemic — despite widespread and persistent ignorance on the matter — is not over. We may wish to be done with Covid, but Covid is not done with us.
More than a year after the first vaccines became available, millions of Americans still haven’t received their shots. And as much as vaccine opponents have sought to frame the choice not to get vaccinated as a personal one, we know such a decision comes at a cost that reaches far and wide — on both a human level and a financial one. The roughly 1,000 Covid-related deaths per day in the United States are proof of this.
Despite lawmakers across the political spectrum encouraging our return to prepandemic routines as if Covid were never around, the world is telling us normalcy is farther away than we tend to think.
The United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Italy recorded surges in Covid cases over the last week. The U.K., Ireland and the Netherlands have seen Covid-related hospitalizations on the rise, as well. And the issue of rising cases isn’t confined to Europe, of course.
On Sunday, the Chinese government announced the lockdown of the city of Shenzhen, a densely populated business hub, in response to reports of new Covid cases there. Lockdowns in China, the world’s largest exporter of goods, are sure to have an impact on the global supply chain at a time when things are already slowed due to the pandemic and the economic fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Take note, Americans: We’re not free from Covid's clutches yet.
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