Masks Come Off in Gotham, but Fear Remains

The following was written by a non-clinician.

On Friday night, March 4th, as I walked into Wolfgang’s on Park Avenue in New York, it felt like I had quantum-leaped into a parallel universe, a happier place that never knew COVID. For two years we have been mired in mortal fear, lockdowns, mandatory masking, and, since last August, checks of your ID and vax-card before you can enter any restaurant.

This time, with my driver’s license and vax card at the ready, the host shrugs, “Not necessary.” Inside, the bar was jammed, every table filled with loud, laughing men consuming abundant quantities of stiff libations, creamed spinach and red meat. And zero masks anywhere — not even on the staff, if my martini-infused memory holds.

This was a celebration. The mayor earlier that day had lifted the city order requiring restaurants to check their customers’ vax cards, effective the following Monday, March 7th. We were jumping the gun.

Just six weeks ago, by contrast, I arrived for lunch at a fancy restaurant in midtown Manhattan, masked and ID check-ready. It was on the last Saturday before the place imposed a new rule to require proof of a third vaccination. Both policies cannot be right.

The U.S. and rest of the world is afflicted by a reality gap between fear-and-dread and enough-already-we’re-sick-of-it. This varies by nation, state and city. and political leaning, and it divides friends and family. My worry is it will overhang all business, government and social gatherings for years.

It will be hard to shed the fear, after two years of injection by the media and government. My haircutter for 15 years is down to two days a week in her shop near Times Square. Last Thursday, we sat there, both of us masked (at her insistence), while she worked her scissors and told me a lot of her old clients aren’t coming back. “They’re still scared.”

So is the NYC government. The entire state is down to its lowest rate of COVID-positive tests since July, at a tiny 1.36% (raising the question of why 98.64 people out of 100 feel compelled to get tested, when they don’t have COVID.)

Even now it runs ads urging COVID vaccinations for every 5-year-old. Yet a 5-year-old’s chances of dying from COVID are teensy. Of almost 1 million COVID deaths in the U.S. since January 2020, 74% of them over age 65, only 865 were younger than 18. Of a total 74 million minors in America.

Inoculating every kindergartener with new-tech RNA vaccines, developed in only a year, is to protect adults. Shameful. Data show kids get COVID less and transmit it less than adults do.

Then again, facts and stats were trumped by fear and politics in our response to the pandemic. The other night, at dinner at an Italian restaurant with a friend I’ve known since our college-age kids were toddlers, she and I argued so fiercely that I fled the fight. She had blamed the unvaccinated for getting hospitalized and delaying surgeries for kids with cancer.

I am double-vaxed, and it should be a personal choice. Hospital cases are way down, and 35% of COVID hospital patients in a recent study were double-vaxed. Plus, it is doubtful that pediatric cancer surgeons get diverted into caring for elderly COVID patients.

So, I demurred, when I should have just let it go. Fear is undeterred by facts.

The next day, my sweetheart tacitly sided with my offended friend by getting a third Moderna shot. In spite of my having cited stats just in from the Centers for Disease Control:

• of 100,000 unvaccinated COVID-19 patients in hospital, six died.
• of 100,000 double-vaxed COVID patients in hospital, 0.6 died (less than 1).
• of 100,000 triple-vaxed COVID patients in hospital, 0.1 died (one-tenth of 1)

If my survival chances with a double-vax are better than 99,999 to 1, why load up on a third shot at all? Because your immunity wanes, the fretters say. The real reason is because of reinforced, embedded fear.

After getting her third jab, my sweetie spent the next two-and-a-half days in rough shape, sleeping much of the time, laid out with achy joints, sore muscles, and overwhelming exhaustion. Kind of like if she had come down with COVID-19.

I have managed to limit myself to pointing this out only once. So far, anyway.