AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 11

Their posts on social media are sobering,
as they tell us how many people have died of
COVID nationally (a weather report the week
of February 1 revealed that 15,000 Americans
had already died of COVID in just a few weeks
of the new year), through charts and graphs
that they’ve collected from a variety of sources,
including CDC data, studies from JAMA
Network, and new research that’s revealed the
effects of Long COVID on the body.
The coalition, which is independent of
partisan political and corporate interests, disseminates
evidence-based updates, the latest
scientific literature and policy recommendations,
with a single goal in mind - to end the
pandemic. And end it in a way that is equitable,
building collective power and supporting communities.
The People’s CDC has become an
important resource for us as we work on
advocacy around Long COVID, which impacts
our lives daily. And they provided us with tools
and resources for the AphroChic 2022 COVID-19
Summit that was held at the end of 2022. We had
the opportunity to speak with them further
about the state of the COVID-19 crisis and what
each of us can do to help bring an end to this
global pandemic.
AC: Can you give us a clear picture of where we
are right now, as a nation, with COVID-19?
PCDC: Looking at wastewater, which is our best
measure of infections right now, community
transmission is rising. The number of cases
fluctuate from week to week, but they are high
everywhere. Hospitalizations are rising almost
everywhere as well, except the West Coast and
some mountain states (for now). Hospitalizations
are especially high among seniors/older
adults. Everyone needs to obtain the bivalent
booster, especially those who are 65 or older.
AC: The explosion of infections following Delta
and Omicron and the decreases that followed
seem to have given us a skewed view of our
progress. Overall, how do the rates of infections,
hospitalizations, and deaths for 2022 compare
to those same numbers from 2020? Are we
making progress or losing ground?
PCDC: It's interesting that there’s a perception
of a decrease, probably because last winter
was the worst surge of the entire pandemic.
However, last summer, with the swarm of
variants, we actually had more transmissions
than the winters of 2020 or 2021 (particularly
before December). We were consistently
at a high level in 2022, since the government
removed more protective layers, including mask
mandates, PCR testing, and case reporting,
and due to uncontrolled transmission, COVID
continues to evolve more variants that become
more transmissible. Cases are being significantly
undercounted due to the lack of an infrastructure
to report rapid testing results and the
drop in urgency for testing. Now, relative to the
amount of transmission, there are somewhat
lower rates of hospitalizations, due in part to
the bivalent booster and COVID treatments like
Paxlovid. But we could be doing much, much
better — and our healthcare system can’t take
this sustained pressure.
AC: There seem to be a number of nuances to interpreting
official reports that can make them
difficult to understand. If states or hospitals
aren’t required to report COVID numbers, how
accurate are the current statistics? If vaccination
rates are based on the number of people
who’ve received a single shot, when two of the
three available vaccines require two shots, and
there’s no mention of boosters, how vaccinated
are we?
PCDC: Without good case reporting, we are
flying a little bit blind. Wastewater — which
doesn’t depend on taking or reporting a test —
is the next best set of data; if folks are sick, then
COVID is in the sewers. But we need a lot more
sites testing their wastewater. The CDC does
measure vaccines and boosters — and boosters
are the number we focus on, because one dose,
especially if it’s been more than a few months,
is not doing a lot. We also look at hospitalizations
and deaths, which also give us an indication
of how the country is dealing with COVID
at the moment. None of these single measures
tell us the whole answer, but collectively, they
give us a sense of how we are doing. We do a
lot of this work at the People’s CDC; take a look
at our weekly Weather Reports that interpret
the data and the latest research so the general
public can understand what is going on. You can
find this on our website, Instagram, Facebook,
Mastodon, and Twitter; you can also subscribe
to our Substack so you get the weekly updates
automatically.
AC: Why is it so difficult to obtain clear information?
Who actually benefits from obfuscated
data and skewed reporting when they only make
it more difficult for us to recover from this crisis?
PCDC: While it’s arguably hard to know the
intention behind this obfuscation of data, it’s
clear that the goal of the government — at all
levels and regardless of the party in charge —
is to encourage us to engage in activities that
generate capital (such as traveling, shopping,
dining indoors at restaurants, and going to
work). Policymakers, businesses, and corporate
media alike continue to decry the economic
impact of COVID-cautious behaviors, because
our concern for our lives and our bodies are inconsequential
compared to the impact on their
wallets.
The CDC itself has released a report
showing that half of adults believed transmission
to be low to moderate, despite
sustained high transmission — which goes
to show the failure of the CDC to communicate
about COVID accurately in the first place.
It’s important to recognize this because when
people perceive local transmission to be high,
they are more likely to use preventive behaviors,
such as avoiding indoor dining and maintaining
masking in public spaces. The same CDC study
underscored that if people knew transmission
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